By Allie Hacherl

Mental health has long been a theme in my life, a priority I know I need to keep in mind when I build rhythms for myself. I've struggled with generalized anxiety for years and have experienced several bouts of depression.

In the past year of the pandemic, both have intensified in my life.

One tool I've found to steady me has been mindfulness practices and guided meditations. I know that both mindfulness and meditation draw from a significant spectrum of practices that might make some believers uncomfortable.

I truly believe, however, that if these habits encourage me to prioritize my own care, slow down, and ground myself in truth and faith, they are indeed helping me to treat my body like God’s temple (1 Corinthians 6:19-20) and take every thought captive in obedience to Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5).

As long as I am aligned in these goals, these mental health tools feel positive and supportive of my faith. They have also become tremendously supportive rhythms in my life.

A couple of weeks ago, I was listening to a guided meditation on the story of Moses parting the Red Sea. As I listened, the words in Exodus 14:22 jumped out at me:

"and the Israelites went through the sea on dry ground, with a wall of water on their right and on their left." (NIV)

Dry ground.
I imagine they would have been perfectly content to trudge through a little mud. Even the ever-complaining-in-the-desert Israelites wouldn't have much to say about some wet dirt with the entire Egyptian army just behind them. The only miracle they needed was for the water to be pulled back.

He didn't have to make the ground dry, but He did.

The upside-down mess that has been the last year on top of my mental health challenges in general can feel like walls of waves, churning on either side of me, threatening to overpower me.

When I become most afraid that they'll drown me, it brings such joy and peace to root myself in the reminder that when the Israelites were just desperate for a way through, God made the ground dry. If this is the care He takes in rescuing His children, I believe that one way or another, the waves will not fall.

If you're also feeling some, all, or any of these things, join me in clinging to the promise of dry ground. Join me in believing that a God who took the time to shelter his children from the mud while saving them from imminent death is on your side. Whether it's through others speaking light into your life, the tools you adopt to support your mental health, or His Word - somehow He is creating dry ground for your path forward through the waves.