Carrying Hope: Encouragement for Men Who Love Someone Struggling With Mental HealthSample

Renew Your Strength

Loving someone with mental illness takes endurance. I have come to believe resilience is a necessary master skill – both for your loved one and for you as you support them. The mental illness journey will likely be long, and you will grow weary. It’s inevitable. You must consistently renew your strength. It’s crucial for you and for those you love. You can’t love and lead when you are mentally, spiritually, emotionally, or physically empty.

Part of the cruelty of mental illness is its draw to isolation – both for the one who struggles and often for the one who loves and supports them. One of the great lies of all mental illness is that it tells the one struggling they are better off alone, not revealing their mental pain to anyone else.

Isolation can also be the great temptation for the one who loves someone battling mental illness. Out of a motivation to protect your loved one, pride, shame, or a combination of mixed motivations, you can be tempted to isolate yourself from the support and community you need to renew your strength.

I know the lie of isolation. My natural instinct still pulls at me to keep our family’s battle to myself. The temptation is there to try to avoid dealing with the stress and pain by “zoning out,” watching ESPN or scrolling through empty content on my phone. These mindless activities can distract, but they don’t provide hope or strength.

Recently, at Stacee’s initiation, we shared a meal with a couple who know our story well and who’ve also walked a long mental illness journey themselves. I can hesitate from pursuing these types of conversations, probably because I can still resist being open and vulnerable, but when I engage, my heart and spirit are renewed.

That hour with my friend, a husband and father who understands and shares the experience of loving someone with a chronic mental health struggle, filled my soul. It was the infusion of hope and courage I needed to better love and support Stacee and to press forward in our journey.

Supporting your loved one’s wishes for confidentiality regarding their mental health is respectful and loving. I write and speak about our journey because Stacee is passionate to share her story to encourage others - thus, the name of her ministry, “Speak Out Loud,” and our shared mission to share hope and encouragement for those who struggle with mental health and for those who love and support them.

But isolation is the “death spiral” of mental illness. Your loved one needs support – from family, a circle of friends and possibly from a therapist and other mental health professionals.

You need support too – a friend, a small group at church or maybe a support group for family members of those struggling with mental health. You might find you also need help from a counselor or therapist yourself, and that's ok. Bottom line, you need others who will listen, encourage, and remind you that you are not alone. As our lives become more difficult, the Bible instructs that we should meet together all the more! (see Hebrews 10:24-25)

Hope is the fruit of intentionally connecting with God through His Word and connecting with other men and the fellowship of other Christians. God promises that those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength, that you can run your race and not grow weary and not falter or fail (see Isaiah 40:31).

Friend, may you "be strengthened with all power according to his (God's) glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience” (Colossians 1:11, NIV). I pray you continue to love and lead well, knowing God is for you and that the fellowship of men who share this journey stand together with you.