It is with great joy that I launch this ministry & website! The idea for a ministry along these lines has been brewing for years. It is wrapped up in my story, particularly the growth and healing that Jesus has been directing the last 5 years. I’m sure in the course of this dialogue I will share my own struggles and healings with mental health and the faith. More than my own story, though, this work is inspired by the women I walked with as a missionary. Every time I’ve hesitated to start this work, I think back to the moment I first saw with clarity why it was needed.
It was my second year as a missionary, and I was meeting Isabella (name changed) for the first time. Isabella was a lovely girl, struggling with an anxiety disorder and a large dose of Catholic guilt when I met her. She had reached out to a friend with her current anxiety about living the Faith and her life choices. That friend introduced her to me.
As we talked, Isabella’s anxiety was palpable. She no longer was living the teaching of the Church, though there was still some draw to God. Currently though she felt her sins were unforgivable and had a view of a God ready to condemn. My heart broke! This woman had every right as a baptized Catholic to know the Father’s love. Both the way she had been instructed in the Faith and her anxiety kept her from knowing and receiving that love. In the moment, I couldn’t reconstruct her view of God. She had come by this image of a God ready to judge in twenty some years in a Catholic family and education system. Introducing something new would take time. Isabella was in therapy, but her therapist in trying to alleviate her anxiety was pushing her away from religion. She needed someone to walk with her who understood God as loving, the effects of anxiety in her life, and how to help her meet God in that anxiety.
For months I prayed, not certain Isabella and I would talk more. Praised be to God she joined a Bible study and I was able to introduce her to the love of the Father, a good Father who walks with us and understands our weakness.
This type of story was not rare in my three years as a missionary, though Isabella stuck in my heart most. Women told me of struggles with body image, anxiety, depression, sexual assault, PTSD, and compulsive disorders. I loved them but often knew how ill equipped I was to walk with them in this part of their lives. As a representative of Christ’s Church, I also knew that my inability to walk with them well had the potential to reflect on Christ’s ability to know, understand, and meet them in these struggles.
This is the hope of The Face of Mercy, to equip the Church, that is you and me, to be able to love like Christ. There are many marginalized groups that we as a Church love well. In the area of serving those with mental illness or injury, the secular world is leaps ahead of us. This should never be the case!
Join me here weekly (God-willing!) for posts intended to start conversations about how we as a Church can grow our hearts to extend the mercy of the Father to all we meet!