What if I told you negative thoughts can be healthy? Negative thoughts can actually act as a natural self-preservation filter to avoid danger. For example, when my kids ask me to do a backflip on the trampoline, it's healthy for me to have negative thoughts and tell my kids, “No way!” It's not an issue of not believing in myself or trusting God enough, it's a valuable negative assessment to avoid harm and loss.

Learning to provide comfort and encouragement for those who are experiencing dark days can be challenging. In tough times we are told that the “ministry of presence” (just being there) for others is what they need . . . but how does that work, practically? Here are 5 useful tips anyone can do!

I’m going to guess that you’re like me and at some point in your life, you have found yourself saying, “If only I’d known then what I know now!” I can say that about being diagnosed with mental illness. Receiving a mental health diagnosis can be devastating – at least it was for me. 

"There is a day coming when I will draw my final breath on this earth.  In the next instant, I will be standing face-to-face with my Lord.  At that moment, things will be very personal between me and God.  He won’t be asking my friends and family on earth if they think I should be ‘voted’ into heaven based on any merits of my own.  I won’t be graded on a curve for the way I lived my life.  All the striving I did during my life to gain love, approval and success will have been for naught."

Tips and ideas to empower your brain to complete mental health and your mental grace.

If you’re anything like me, the Thanksgiving season does not magically produce a more thankful version of myself. In fact, it usually yields the opposite. I don’t know if it’s the shorter days with less sunshine or the never-ending end-of-year task list, but Thanksgiving seems to trigger even more stress, anxiety and bouts of depression. So, for many of us, we may just be trying to make it through.