Bringing Hope to a Mental Hostel

Finding Hope and Purpose

 

We’ve been visiting Murray Lodge, which is an assisted living home for people with mental disabilities ranging from schizophrenia to bipolar. Some seamed to be there for just assisted living in general, but all have come there from a mental institution, being given a chance to live with a bit more freedom.

The atmosphere isn’t one filled with hope; it’s one filled with despair and listlessness and cigarette smoke. Meal times and smoke breaks are the only thing breaking up the mundane routine of life without purpose there. So we were there to establish a relationship with them, help them find some purpose and bring them hope. Someone taking time to talk with them seamed more than they often get. Through the simple act of showing we cared and showing them love, we got to see some life flow back into them and their withdrawn faces light up. This week we began teaching them life skills. Basic things, mostly cleaning their rooms, laundry and encouraging them to do these things independently.

Some ARE content and happy there knowing it will be the only home they will know for the rest of their lives. Few have family visit. They are free to come and go as they please, but most only leave on group outings feeling safe and accepted with people that are ‘like them’. They’ve been put down and cast out for so long that all they say over and over in their heads AND out loud are the hurtful things that have been said about them. Satan has wispered these lies in their ears for so long that he doesn’t even have to say it to them any longer, they now speak it over themselves.

 

Some go to church on Sundays nearby and those are the ones that are finding Hope in Jesus even in such a place as Murray Lodge. They talk about Christ giving them strength to endure and we encourage them to share their light with the others in the Lodge who desperately need life spoken into them. Something as simple as that gives them purpose. Gives them all hope!

I was helping an Aboriginal woman that said she’d been living there for ten years and the pills she was taking were for schizophrenia. She was an intelligent, gentle woman, but with very little hope left. As we cleaned her room together, she talked about the church she’d been to nearby. They’d been telling her about the end times coming soon and she was scared and said, ‘I don’t want to burn in hell for eternity.’ I told her there is good news that she doesn’t have to! I saw Jesus give peace to a woman with schizophrenia simply by talking about hope and forgiveness.

 

I told her that I used to fear that very same thing because I had a past that I didn’t think God would forgive me of either, but the good news is that God still loves us right where we’re at, far from perfect. After a lifetime of being fed lies from the devil, she was pretty oppressed and she shared fears about her brother who had nine demons possessing him and she hadn’t seen him in so long. I could relate to this beautiful woman with her struggles because being fed lies and listening to them was a big part of my past too. It gave me great joy to share with her the freedom that she can have from those lies.

 

If you’ve been beat up and oppressed by harsh words spoken over you; STOP listening and START speaking truth over yourself!  I mean it…say it outloud right where you’re at! It’s something I’m doing daily to not only heal but protect me from the lies:

I am free. I am redeemed. I am whole. I am pure. I am a beautiful child of God. I am a vessle. I am light. I am truth. I am alive. And so are you!!!!!