“The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.”  Psalm 34:18

It’s impossible to be human without experiencing pain and loss. We have all been there. Whether that is through the death of a loved one, a broken relationship, a health crisis, the loss of a job or position of importance, or the death of a dream, loss is part of life.  And it HURTS.

Recently I’ve been through what is probably the most difficult disappointment that I’ve ever experienced.  For me there is nothing as painful as the suffering that comes from a broken heart. Those of you who have been there know what I’m talking about.

If you’re like me, you would do anything to avoid this kind of pain. But we need to stop and ask ourselves a question: If we avoid the pain that life brings us, what beauty and blessing could we also be avoiding that God wants to bring to us through it?

Wherever you’re at today, I want to help you find the hope that’s hidden in your pain.

How You Deal Affects How You Heal

It seems like there are two extremes that people take when dealing with pain. The first is, many people will try to bury it through their busyness. They do this by filling their lives with activity so that they can avoid feeling the pain as much as possible. This is called numbing, and it does very little to actually heal the pain or take it away. It actually can be very damaging to us physically, mentally and spiritually. 

The other extreme is to wallow so much in our negative emotions that we become swallowed up by them. We may go towards decreasing our normal activities and isolating ourselves. This tends to throw us into a pit of depression and hopelessness that can be hard to climb out of. 

In the broken-hearted pathways that I’ve walked through these last few years, I believe God has been showing me that there is a third option.

This response to pain neither numbs it, nor is swallowed up by it. This involves becoming vulnerable enough to allow ourselves to “be” in our pain, feeling all of the negative emotions that come with it.  The key is to do this in the arms of a God Who has the power to not only heal us, but to work everything out for our good. 

This is the path that I’m learning to take, and I’m finding that it is rich with hope. I believe that when we face pain in the arms of the Father, we are actually positioning ourselves for our greatest personal growth, which can pave the way for some of the greatest breakthroughs of our lives.  In fact, Scripture promises us that our greatest experience of joy often lies on the other side of our greatest pain. 

The nights of crying your eyes out give way to days of laughter.

Psalm 30:5 The Message

Don’t Drown in Your Heartache

We try to coach ourselves into a “right” response towards suffering when the best obedience and trust comes after a long, weepy messy cry where we find God safe enough to handle and hold our big emotions.

author Sara Haggerty

During times of loss, grief comes in waves.  One day, we feel we’re doing okay, and we’re getting past it. Then all of a sudden, WHAM! We’re hit by another wave. Sadness, disappointment, confusion, anxiety, depression, regret, anger, and many other negative emotions wash over us again. 

I’m a deep feeler and I feel emotions very intensely, so this can be overwhelming and even scary for me.  In the past, when I would feel this wave coming on, I would panic and start to fight it. I tried to get myself out of it because I wanted to be anywhere but there, swallowed up by the undertow of the wave.  

On one of these occasions, I heard the gentle whisper of Jesus to my heart: “Patience.” He wanted me to be patient with myself and allow myself to be where I was at. I was dealing with a painful loss and my heart was broken. This felt unbearable at times, and for me it couldn’t end fast enough. I wanted to have joy and to feel good again. Jesus showed me that I was scolding myself and not allowing myself to grieve. I realized this was totally counter-productive and was even prolonging the difficult season that I so longed to be out of.  

Have you ever seen a drowning person? They fight and struggle and do everything they can to keep their head above water. It is impossible and even dangerous to attempt to rescue a drowning person…UNLESS they stop fighting and let themself just “be” in your arms, allowing you to carry them to safety. 

In a similar way, I was fighting and struggling against my waves of grief. Consequently, I was making it difficult for Jesus to rescue me from the emotions that I didn’t know how to get myself out of.

Through the whisper of God to my heart that day, He taught me that there is wisdom in embracing pain and allowing myself to feel and express it to Him. Only then can I be embraced by the God Who brings comfort and healing to the broken-hearted.

Ugly Crying is Good for the Soul

Do you know what it means to “ugly cry”?  When you ugly cry, your emotions have become so intense that you just need to express them. You have lost all concern for what you look like. 

You know what I’m talking about: a scrunched-up face, mascara running, nose running, not very attractive-looking. I believe it is so freeing to ugly cry in the arms of God.  Whenever I have, I can say that it has been followed by peace and I have seen God move.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted

Matthew 5:4

Hannah is my favorite example in the Bible of what a good ugly cry in the presence of God can do.  Her story is found in 1 Samuel 1-2. Hannah was loved and favored by her husband, but she was barren and had no children. Every year her husband would take her and his other wife to the temple where sacrifices were made to worship the Lord. And year-after-year, the other wife would taunt and provoke Hannah because she wasn’t able to conceive. And every year, Hannah cried so much she couldn’t eat. 

Finally, one year, Hannah reached her breaking point. Instead of just feeling sad and sorry for her situation, she went into the presence of the Lord in the temple. The Bible says that she was deeply distressed and prayed to the Lord and wept bitterly. She was not a pretty sight! The priest over the temple actually accused Hannah of being drunk because of the way she looked.

Hannah wasn’t drunk. She was allowing herself to feel the depths of her pain in God’s presence, and this created a cry that reached Heaven.  After this, Hannah had her first son, Samuel, who became one of the greatest prophets Israel has ever seen. Hannah went on to have five more children!  

This goes to show that we can cry and feel bad about our situation, but things don’t really change until we go to God and express our sorrow to Him from the depths of our hearts. David knew this secret. You can read the Psalms and see that he did it all the time.

Jesus Showed Us the Way

Jesus Christ Himself knew the secret of facing his pain in the presence of the Father.  The Bible gives us some intimate glimpses into how He expressed His grief. Hebrews 5:7 tells us: “During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with fervent cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission.”   

Jesus knew it was the Father’s will for Him to die by crucifixion. This doesn’t change the mental and emotional anguish that he felt facing such a death. In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus confessed to His disciples: “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.” He prayed so intensely to the Father that He sweat drops of blood.   

I believe that the only way that Jesus found the strength to suffer and die on the cross was by facing the depth of His emotional pain and anguish, and bringing it before the Father in all humility and honesty.  If the Son of God needed to do this, how much more do we? 

In Jesus Christ, God became human, and He experienced the full range of human suffering. God knows how it feels to be rejected, lonely, abandoned, betrayed, burdened, grieved over loss, abused, treated unjustly, and so on. Because of this, when we go to God, we are going to the ultimate source of empathy and the ultimate source of healing.

The beautiful thing that happens when we go to God with our pain, is that He doesn’t leave us broken and empty-handed. This is the part where HOPE comes in.

Beauty for Ashes

When we give our sorrows to God, Isaiah 61:1-3 promises us that a beautiful exchange takes place. We bring God our broken heart, and He gives us healing.  We bring Him the ashes of loss, and He turns them into beauty. We bring Him our sadness, and He restores our joy.  We bring Him the heaviness that we feel, and He gives us a testimony of praise and thanksgiving.  And then comes the promise:

Rename them “Oaks of Righteousness”
    planted by God to display his glory.

Isaiah 61:3b, The Message Bible

This is THE BEST PART. What I believe this means is that the deepest, darkest valleys of pain that we walk through are the times where we can experience the most exponential growth of our lives.

An oak tree is a symbol of life, strength, and stability.  Oaks can live for centuries and are some of the most resilient trees in history, with the ability to sustain powerful winds and survive fires.

When we choose to go through our pain in the arms of God, He uses our difficult experience to mature us into people of compassionate wisdom, strength, and stability who can nourish and feed others. We are molded and shaped by the hands of the Father into vessels of God’s mercy that He can use to bring healing and hope to so many people.  Then, when we emerge from the darkness of our own suffering, we are able to shine the bright light of His glory into a dark and hurting world that needs Him more all the time.

So, if you have been through a painful season of loss, you have so much to gain from it!  I hope this brings hope to you today because it sure brings hope to me. I pray that these words are a light shining into your dark place, leading you into the fulfillment of God’s promise:

I’ll turn Heartbreak Valley into Acres of Hope.

Hosea 2:15, The Message

I don’t know about you, but I believe that my best days are on the other side of Heartbreak Valley.

Put it into Practice

You know what to do. Get alone with God, and cry it out. You might want to journal your prayers.

If you have difficulty expressing your emotions or don’t really know where to start, I encourage you to use the powerful tool of lamentation. Lamentation is the practice of expressing grief to God that is used in the Psalms. Here’s an article and a short video that will walk you through the process.

Did you enjoy this post? I think you will also enjoy the post: Finding True Love

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