Do feel trapped in a hopeless situation? Do you feel like there’s no way out, and God’s forgotten you? Do you wonder if there is any hope for your broken marriage, your upside down finances, your stalled career, your dissolved dreams? Well, come join me at the table, friend, and let’s reevaluate your position. From where I’m sitting, your story’s just starting to get good. Continue reading
Red Vine Spirituality
Taylor K. Arthur balances Bipolar 1 Disorder, marriage, and motherhood with a nitty-gritty faith inspiring a twisted, blissful life.
Category: Living Free with Bipolar Disorder (page 1 of 13)
Living with bipolar disorder often feels like standing at a window, watching life play out in shifting light. One morning the glass sparkles with hopeful energy, and by evening it clouds over with the heavy fog of exhaustion. Learning to notice these changes without judgment becomes a quiet form of self care, a way of honoring the full range of being human rather than fighting against moods that come and go. Over time, paying attention to patterns and rhythms can help create a steadier sense of inner ground, even when the weather inside keeps changing.
Faith and mental health can sit together at the same table, even when the conversation feels tangled. Many who live with bipolar disorder describe prayer as a way to lay the day down honestly, bringing grief, frustration, and gratitude side by side. Spirituality does not erase the illness, but it can offer a wider story in which pain and joy are both allowed to belong. Choosing to live openly, with both brokenness and hope, can feel like an act of quiet courage that draws others into a more merciful understanding of what it means to be fully alive.
Mental illness touches the whole family, not just the person carrying the diagnosis. Spouses learn to read moods, children learn to flex around hard days, and friends learn that plans may shift without warning. Naming this reality out loud can ease the loneliness that so often surrounds mood disorders. Honest conversation about bipolar disorder within a marriage or a home invites grace into the gaps, reminding everyone that love is larger than any single chapter. Community, whether found in church, support groups, or a faithful friend, becomes a steady anchor.
Recovery from bipolar disorder is rarely a straight line, and that is something worth repeating on the hard days. It tends to unfold in small, ordinary choices: keeping appointments, taking medication as prescribed, moving the body gently, and leaning into supportive relationships. Spiritual practice can weave through these choices in ways that feel personal and honest, offering language for what is hard and what is healing. The point is not perfection but persistence, showing up again and again for the slow, patient work of tending to a mind that asks for steady care.
Do you ever feel like you’re hitting the same wall again and again? That no matter how spiritual you think you’ve become, no matter how much counseling you get, you just keep making out with the pavement? Yeah. Me, too. But there’s hope. Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed. Hebrew 12:12-13 Continue reading
Mordecai told them to reply to Esther, “Do not think that in the king’s palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews. For if you keep silence at such a time as this, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another quarter, but you and your father’s family will perish. Who knows? Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as this.”
Esther 4:15-16
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When life has been hard for a long time, it gets more and more difficult to believe that it can be better. But, we at Red Vine refuse to give into that notion. We believe in the God who brings us through the wilderness, providing all the way, into the Promised Land. We believe we serve a good Father, a Father who works all things together for our good. Our hope for a Promised Land life will not be in vain, and We will behold our Lord in the land of the living, yielding fruit for our labor and rest for our spirits. Continue reading
When you feel like you’ve been in a dead sprint for quite sometime, maybe this is the year to breathe.
Happy New Year, Red Vine Family. I realize that it’s February 5th: a whole thirty-six days after the New Year.
I’m learning as I run this race that my creative can’t be stuffed into a little square on the calendar. Creative needs time to run. She needs time to breathe, to feel the wind, to sift out her feelings and mix in experience. I can’t rush her. I can’t schedule her. So, instead, I let her decompress after Christmas, and I let her settle into a new year and a new word and new set of expectations. Continue reading
