How Can You Comfort Others Amidst Your Own Pain?
I looked at my watch and my heart skipped a beat. I was set to speak on a panel at our women’s ministry event in thirty minutes. For hours, I had been in the throes of dealing with an episode with my son as inflammation in his brain turned him into someone else. As I tried to protect everyone involved until his body and mind could settle down, the chances of me making it on time—let alone being able to speak—seemed slimmer by the minute. Since my husband was gone for work, I called my dad for reinforcements. He rushed to our house to help manage the situation.
As I waited for his arrival, my child’s screams and angry actions continued to pierce my ears and shatter my heart, as they had countless times before. All I wanted to do was curl up in a ball, sob until there were no tears left, and crawl into bed. So few people knew the magnitude and details of our circumstances. And now, in a painfully fresh way, I felt as fragile as porcelain; I was physically and emotionally exhausted; and I was being hit by a ten-foot wave of grief yet again.
How in the world could I stand before hundreds of women and speak of God’s sufficiency and strength in my suffering when I myself felt utterly broken?
And yet, somehow, within the hour, and with a strength beyond my own, I was standing in front of hundreds of women at our church. As I waited my turn to speak, all I could do was pray—no, plead—for God’s strength and comfort. The tears pooled in my eyes as I tried to push away the swirling thoughts from the war zone I had just left. “I can’t do this on my own,” I silently prayed. “I’m a mess. How can I possibly help anyone else right now?”
Before I knew it, the mic was in my hand, and before a word had left my mouth, the dam of resilience broke, and the tears came flooding out.
I took a deep breath and gathered myself the best I could. As if I wasn’t the one moving my mouth, I began to share honestly (albeit vaguely) about what had occurred right before I arrived and how much I was needing God’s strength to even speak. As I shared about God's past faithfulness and the difficult, but redeeming, story God had been writing in my life, a confidence, strength, and fire began to rise up in me—to the point that I was now shedding tears of joy rather than tears of grief.
“He didn’t need me to have it all together. He didn’t need me to be all-wise and have a perfectly curated message. He simply needed me to step out in faith.”
Christ Pours Himself Out Through Our Weakness
I don’t know half of what I said that night, but by the end, countless women had shared with me how much they were moved to see a hope and strength being poured out through me. Women were brought to tears simply by seeing that they weren’t the only one hurting. And women who weren’t suffering shared how their faith had been bolstered as they saw the Spirit at work before their very eyes.
However, what stands out to me the most about that night is the fact that I entered that room feeling broken, weak, grieved, and empty. But I left that room filled with joy, comfort, strength, and a renewed sense of hope. Why? Because I tasted the sweet comfort and renewed strength of Christ as he poured himself out through my weak and aching heart into the lives of others. He didn’t need me to have it all together. He didn’t need me to be all-wise and have a perfectly curated message. He simply needed me to step out in faith, trusting that he would be enough, and that none of this had happened outside of his control.
Being Ministered to As We Minister to Others
Friends, the reality is, when we’re hurting, our tendency is to believe that we have nothing to give. We’re convinced that we have to pull ourselves together before we’ll be any good to those around us. And we can become so overwhelmed by our own pain that we become blind to the pain around us.
But Paul reminds us in 2 Corinthians 1:3–4 of this:
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.”
“The comfort of Christ often comes as we speak the truth of God’s comfort out loud to others and spur one another on. ”
Comfort is meant to be transactional. Just like the gospel isn’t meant to stop with us, the comfort of Christ is meant to be poured into us and then through us. The problem, however, is that it’s awfully tempting to sit and wait until we feel better before we’re willing to step into the mess of other people’s lives. And when we do, we miss out on the beautiful reality that the comfort of Christ often comes as we speak the truth of God’s comfort out loud to others and spur one another on.
In part, because it reminds us that we aren’t the only ones hurting, and it puts our trials in perspective to the magnitude of suffering around us. Secondly, because God meant for us to be in community—mess and all. Similar to how we often learn something better when we have to teach it to someone else, there’s something that bolsters our own faith as we speak the truth, promises, and comfort of Jesus to others.
Friend, the truth is there may be times when we feel so beaten and worn that we are nearly paralyzed by grief and can do nothing more than get ourselves dressed in the morning. And in those seasons, “he gives more grace” (James 4:6). But when we surface enough to breathe, there is great comfort to be found in ministering the comfort of Christ to others, even as we ourselves are in need of comfort—for God has a miraculous way of causing the one to bring about the other.
So I want to encourage you today to seek comfort where you might not think it will be found: in comforting another. Because there isn’t much more comforting than seeing the pain we are experiencing (which often feels so pointless) being redeemed in a way far bigger than us. No, it doesn’t necessarily take the pain away—but it breathes redemption and hope into it.
If you need the comfort of Christ today, I pray that the Lord will help lift your weary eyes off of your immediate circumstances and give you the strength to step into the life of another hurting sister-in-Christ. You just might find the greatest comfort of Christ to be found in the least expected places.
Sarah Walton is a stay-at-home mom with four kids under 15 years of age. She’s the co-author of Hope When It Hurts and Together Through the Storms (May 2020), and the author of the forthcoming evangelistic book on suffering,Tears and Tossings: Hope in the Waves of Life. She and her husband, Jeff, recently relocated to Colorado Springs and attend Austin Bluff Evangelical Free Church. After more than a decade of trials and learning to walk with Christ as her family navigates Lyme Disease, special needs, and more, she shares how the gospel gives hope to our suffering. You can find more of Sarah’s writings at her blog Setapart.net.
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