keeping faith and fight

"I know everyone has ups and downs in all journeys we embark on. Today was a down.
Today it was a little harder to be happy as the children were singing in [church].
Today I didn't feel like listening to the lesson but rather I wanted to curl up in a ball and sleep. Today I didn't want to hear the encouragement that I just need to have faith and things will work out fine. Today, I wanted to close my eyes and pretend the world would melt away into nice warm nothingness.
Why is it that when things are harder the things I need to do more are the things I want to do the least?
I am planning on tomorrow being an up day in my journey. I am also hoping that the ups and downs level out a bit in the very near future. I guess when it all comes down to it, that is what faith is for after all."

This was a blog entry of a friend (I think she writes beautifully) who is in fact going through some very hard times. Now I understand her point and on her blog they are really irrelevant to me and my blog. Yet she writes a nice introduction to a few points that have been a huge struggle for me personally and I think can be some of the big misconceptions with mental illness/disorders, and I'd like to address that.

Ups and downs are normal and I am certain most people struggle with that from time to time. But where is the line drawn? What is a "normal" human struggle and what is a physiological problem? And when is it merely a lack of faith and spirituality?

I (of course) have formed a few opinions on the matter. One point I'd really like to make is that things of religious and spiritual nature, in my experience and observation, can and will feed an imbalance. For me personally (and I've touched on it before) there are "spiritual highs."

I have often considered that my ups and manic like symptoms are simply the pendulum swing in an imbalanced state as a result of my fighting depression (or just an imbalance). If the chemicals are out of whack and I push myself to do things to make me happy or more spiritual or what ever then they will still be out of whack and I will respond to the stimuli in a different, maybe more extreme, way then if my chemistry was "better" balanced.

Does this make sense?

And which is better or worse to be down and out of balance, or to be up and out of balance? We tend to think it is better to be up, period, but I know plenty of people who know better. Out of balance is out of balance and when out of balance becomes to usual and to extreme, up or down, then there is very possibly a problem that no amount of fighting or faith will stabilize.

Unless, of course, it is God's will also. But this will continue to be a hard part of human nature to accept God's will that is not always the same as ours. I guess a point I am trying to make here is sometimes it takes faith to accept that I have a problem that I can't kick on my own. And it takes faith to tackle that problem appropriately.

I think it is important to kick things on our own, and try to solve our own problems but may I remind you that God did not put us here alone and for as much as it is an individual experience it is also a collective experience. And we are all still God's children and loved by Him no matter how His will for us may be different form our own (with our limited understanding).

Mental illness and disorders are a very hard thing to accept because, and I think my sister put it best when she said
"...in fact you're probably fragments of 'each', combined with YOU.

"...Mental health is a many headed monster with hundreds of faces.... People are not the disease, they HAVE it. There is so much people don't understand... because it's a mental health disorder and NOT a medical ailment, in the common sense of the word, and the damage done to the individual is nothing less than devastating and dangerous."

To my friend and you, or any one who ever relates to the ups and downs, I would say keep fighting, keep trying. I appreciate my friends faith, I hope that others will have that to.

But if, when life settles down, or even if it never does, if you don't adjust and you hit the point where it is taking too much time and energy to battle the ups and downs, if your efforts seem to escalate the ups to be followed by deeper downs, and/or if you ever ever start thinking of ways to help the world to "melt into nice warm nothingness," then please employ a few more forces in your army and get the help you need and deserve.