Guest blogger Rebekah Benimoff has experienced her share of caregiving complications as she watches over a son with diabetes and her military veteran husband who lives with PTSD. Today, she shares what she’s learned about where to find complete understanding for both the physical and mental health diagnoses her loved ones deal with every day.

Caregiving Complications and Light

Sometimes life is more than complicated–it’s staggering. It’s tangled and muddled, raveled into a turbulent mire. Caregivers can find themselves deluged as special needs, medical issues, and caregiving complications bring much more than we can handle.

As Beth Moore writes in Believing God, “I am so glad God did not limit his Holy Writ to high and lofty subjects.” Instead, he gets down and dirty with the best of us, reaching for us in the midst of the messiest, most desperate times. “So that we don’t lose heart or hope, He graciously made sure we’d know… abnormal is more normal than normal,” Moore says.

Still, there are secret shames that haunt our paths. Pressures and broken places, shards littering the path to greater wellness. Some of the stumbling places are losses or wounds. Others are diagnoses. The ones we don’t talk about. The ones that come with a stigma. Diabetes is generally accepted, but what of depression or anxiety?

When families flounder through mental health crises it can be isolating. In the throes of grief, there is a fear that keeps us from sharing these secret struggles–sometimes even with those close to us. Whether your loved one is an inpatient at a mental health facility, or seeking outpatient care, it seems safer to hide the frightening reality that within a loved one’s intricate make-up, something microscopic is disjointed… and the ramifications are life altering.

While it is wise to share the tenderest burdens with those who’ve earned our trust, know this–God does not shy away from our dark and painful places. He does not brand or dishonor. He does not judge mental suffering as less than physical pain.

When I am overwhelmed and exhausted, worn down under the demands of managing harrowing medical diagnoses, when I feel confined, when fears or uncertainties compress my spirit, I am learning the way to get to a wide open place where I can nestle into Jesus. In His arms I find:

I am not stuck. I am held.

My hardest journeys are opportunities for moment by moment intimacy with God. I confess I still need practice running to my Healer, my only True Source. His presence IS the gift amidst suffering. He IS the Light, the way through. There is no shame in allowing Him free access to “sort out the tangled mess,” as Moore explains.
In a world fraught with labels and subjective chatter, there is One who is Safe and Secure, a Light which thrives in murky jumbles and caregiving complications.

It cannot and will not be quenched.
John 1:5 (The Voice Translation)

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