Delight in Disorder Ministries
Tony Roberts, Chief Shepherd
Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.
(Psalms 37:4)
Season 6 of the Revealing Voices podcast is underway!
New addition this season – a monthly Haikast feature.
Writing as Therapy: Chasing Away Sorrows and Giving Birth to Courage
I can shake off everything as I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn. ― Anne Frank. 1 That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. 2 The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. 3 We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. 4 We write this to make our joy complete. -- 1 John 1.1-4. I spoke with a woman on the phone some time ago. She's struggling with depression and finding it difficult to accomplish [...]
Hope for Troubled Minds: To My Love
From the author: A couple of months after my husband and I started dating, I began noticing that something was not right. As someone with lived experience with a mental health condition, I notice symptoms of PTSD which provoke him to anger. I searched for help through NAMI (National Alliance On Mental Illness) and started educating myself through a caregiver class called NAMI Homefront for family members of people with military trauma. There, I was able to gather information on how to deal with his condition. After a year of courting, we got married. I thought loving him would be enough to empower him to change his behavior and seek help. How wrong was I! We were able to maintain five bittersweet marriage years, but the illness took a toll on our relationship, and after seeing no change and lack of responsibility regarding his illness, I decided to file for [...]
Hope for Troubled Minds: An anthology of letters between those with brain illnesses and our loved ones.
Photo of a young Linda Rippee and Catherine Rippee-Hanson with their baby brother Mark. Mark developed a brain illness and died of undertreatment and the chronic effects of homelessness. I am dedicating this project to the Rippees, a testimony that even life-long devoted love isn't yet enough to conquer serious brain illness in this life. Yet. But his legacy lives on and promotes positive change that gives Hope for Troubled Minds. Tony Roberts, author of When Despair Meets Delight: Cultivating Hope for Those Battling Mental Illness ; podcaster of Revealing Voices ; and administrator of the Facebook community group Hope for Troubled Minds is shepherding a project through his blog at delightindisorder.org we hope will culminate in a book with color photos entitled Hope for Troubled Minds: An anthology of letters between those with brain illnesses and our loved ones. Submit your letter written to your loved one (first [...]
Hope for Troubled Minds: One Mom’s Journey from Chaos to Hope
Randye Kaye is the author of Ben Behind His Voices: One Family's Journey From the Chaos of Schizophrenia to Hope (Rowman & Littlefield, 2011), and Happier Made Simple: Choose Your Words. Change Your Life (Front Porch Press, 2022). She's also an actor, voice talent, radio broadcaster, audiobook narrator, teacher and speaker. She co-hosts several podcasts, including Schizophrenia: 3 Moms in the Trenches. She lives with her husband in Connecticut, and her children and grandkids live close by. Her dining room and living room are full of toys. Dear Ben, Life has not turned out to be what any of us imagined, hoped for you, when you were a little boy. You: so bright, so sweet, so enthusiastic, so loving. So many friends, so many talents. The future, so promising. And then came schizophrenia. The great thief. Oh, the symptoms presented in many forms before we - or at least I [...]
Hope for Troubled Minds – Dreams Deferred by Mary DiNardi
Mary was born and raised in Boston. She moved to Florida in 2008, where she worked in the hospitality industry and as a Victim Advocate. In May of 2022, she and her husband retired, with lots of travel plans! She now volunteers as a Victim Advocate for a local Police Department. For the past several years, she has worked on obtaining Mental Health resources for her community and in raising awareness for the Suicide crisis. Mary wants you to know her son is more than his diagnoses. Justin is extremely bright, funny, and strong. She is blessed to be his mom. Dear Justin.. I recently found the journal I kept while I was pregnant with you. I cried reading it. I never would have imagined how hard your life, our lives, would be. Our journey is not the one I wrote about in that journal. The hopes and dreams [...]
Hope for Troubled Minds: My son Jacob by Angie Collier
Angie Collier is a teacher and NAMI volunteer. She quit her full time job in order to be more available to her son. She currently works as a reading specialist online. Dear Jacob, I loved you from the start. Your bright red hair, chubby cheeks and the last of my 3 children. Your brother and sister adored you - holding you, telling you stories, reading to you. You loved lining your Hot Wheels from your bedroom to the living room. You quickly learned to read and you have an incredible vocabulary. At 8 you started hearing voices. We took you to a doctor who put you on medicine, but your depression plunged. In Middle School, you started drugs to self-medicate and later alcohol. At 15 you were diagnosed with Schizoaffective Disorder. The voices, paranoia, seeing things and violence has been too much to endure, but my love for you [...]
