What is There to Celebrate on Mother’s Day?
“Motherhood. It brings with it such complicated grief; yet in the midst of that grief, there lies a beauty endowed by the Creator. Because since before the fall, motherhood has been God’s very good plan to show us more of himself. Since the fall, its complexity often clouds out the beauty, leaving us wondering at times what there is to celebrate on Mother’s Day.” What is There to Celebrate on Mother’s Day? by Madelyn Istrate
Can Lament Be Worship?
“Have you ever felt like it was wrong to be honest about your grief? Perhaps you’ve told yourself, “It could be worse” or “At least...” Maybe someone said something that made you feel that by crying too much or lingering too long in mourning you weren’t living in faith or hope. But platitudes, conciliations, or guilt don’t help us much to navigate grief. It is painful to live in our cursed and broken world. This is not the pristine world God created. We were not meant to feel betrayal or disease. We were not meant to witness death or severed relationships. But we do. We live in the in-between—between Christ’s victory over death on the cross and when Christ will return and fix all the brokenness. While we wait, we face death, but we have access to rich grace in the face of death. We have lament.” Can Lament Be Worship? by Alyson Punzi
The Worth in Our Waiting by Jenn Hesse
“The Lord gradually opened my eyes to his deeper purposes for that hard season of waiting. He wasn’t pressing me under his thumb as a harsh faith lesson. Instead, he wanted more for me than any earthly desire. Through waiting I came to realize that God’s plan is always the long game. He created us in Christ for good works he prepared beforehand (Eph. 2:10). He is committed to complete the good work he started in us at salvation (Phil. 1:6). By His Spirit we are being transformed into his image from glory to glory (2 Cor. 3:18). Waiting might feel like wasted time to us, when nothing is happening and we’re not able to reach our goals. That’s not how time works with God. His Word shows us that waiting is open season for sanctification. In the interval between wanting and receiving, he actively grows us to become more like our Savior.” - The Worth in Our Waiting by Jenn Hesse
In Your Trials, Remember What Is True
“Maybe you’re single, and you want to be married. Maybe you just learned your mom has cancer. Maybe your husband has been unfaithful. Maybe your baby is in the NICU. Maybe you’re juggling multiple responsibilities and don’t know how to be “all in” with any of them. Whatever it is, your hard is your suffering. Like a wounded animal, vulnerable to a predator’s attack, we’re more prone in our suffering to the enemy of our souls. But God’s Word teaches us how to ‘be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might’.” - In Your Trials, Remember What Is True, by Katie Faris
God's Sovereignty in Our Suffering
“We don’t need to know all of the answers for why *fill in the blank* is happening before deciding to trust God. Our pain doesn’t have to make sense before God uses it for his greater purpose. Even as we groan earthside, Scripture reveals reasons to rejoice over the results of suffering in our lives—endurance, character, and hope (Rom. 5:3-5). Our dependence on God is never so apparent as during periods of suffering. Sometimes, the character he wants to develop in us for his glory can only come through hardship. We can learn to receive this as a gift; that our Master Gardener’s pruning produces the fruit of his Spirit in us.” - God's Sovereignty in Our Suffering by Ashley Setterlind
Outward Comfort for the Inward Ache
“Two months ago, I lost my sister. In my sorrow, I learned two things. The first is this: the gospel is big enough to hold up all our hurts. The pain of this world does not get to have the last word. Not in my sister’s life. Not in my life. And the second? Love is a verb and is best lived out in workaday ways. It doesn’t have to be flashy. It just needs to be faithful. It just has to show up. Hygge is not a necessary component to healing the hurt of searing loss. But, it certainly helps. If we let it, the comfort we provide to those in grief can be a tangible tool to show them the love of Christ.” - Outward Comfort for the Inward Ache by Jamie Erickson
God’s Heart Toward Us When Life Is Hard
“In that series of months, God seemed far away to my family and me. We found ourselves asking, “Why would God allow this? What is the point of this? Why us?” It felt like God’s heart toward us was punishment or spite or anything other than love. At that young age, I didn’t have the answers, nor did I have the ability to articulate all I was thinking. But in the years since I have realized that in the moments that life is hard, God’s heart toward us is never hate or punishment or indifference. It is only love.” - God’s Heart Toward us When Life is Hard by Keagan Hayden
Finding Jesus in the Furnace
“The day we received my first cancer diagnosis, my husband and I sat down with our (then) six-year-old son to tell him the news. Jeremy shed some tears and hugged me tight. I locked eyes with him and said, “This is hard, isn’t it, bud? It’s not good news. But God is with us, and he turns everything for our good. Everything.” Jeremy paused, then asked if we could read the story of “the fiery furnace.” My husband opened the Bible to Daniel 3 and read of King Nebuchadnezzar’s intimidating gold statue, threatening edict, and furious rage at Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego when they refused to bow down. You know how the story goes: after the men had been bound and thrown into the fiery inferno… My husband finished the story and closed the Bible, and after a pause Jeremy said, “There are four of us in this family.” In his suffering, a six-year-old looked and saw that God was with us in our own fiery furnace. He was given eyes to see Jesus standing with us in the flames. ‘” - Finding Jesus in the Furnace by Colleen Chao
Gospel Hope in Infertility, Loss, and Unmet Expectations
“In the early years of my infertility journey, I fought my grief tooth and nail. But over the years I’ve realized the beauty of the pathway of lament. I’ve found that while lament leads us to hope, we must go through grief first. True Christian lament doesn’t ignore the pain and the brokenness of this world. Rather, it acknowledges it, enters into it, and through it draws nearer to the compassionate heart of Christ.” - Gospel Hope in Infertility, Loss, and Unmet Expectations by Lauren Bowerman
Three Pitfalls When Life is Hard
“It’s easy to equate our ease and comfort as God’s love for us, and our pain and suffering as his punishment or indifference. But his love is not dictated by the circumstances around us, it’s dictated by the truth that he loved us when we hated him, died for us while we mocked him, and pursued us while we were determined to go our own way. When we face painful circumstances, even the ones that seem senseless, we need to constantly remind ourselves of God’s steadfast love toward us. When we can’t understand his ways, we can trust his character.” - Three Pitfalls When Life is Hard, by Sarah Walton
Charles and Susie: Faith in the Midst of Pain
“Charles and Susie’s spirituality served as the foundation that kept them buttressed amidst their many sufferings. They prayed. They read their Bibles. They worshiped God. They sang. They labored in the Lord’s service. They loved one another well. They died with hope. Charles and Susie faced death’s cold stare by praising God. Such is the way they approached every trial along the way.” - Charles and Susie: Faith in the Midst of Pain, by Ray Rhodes
Unbolted from My Love Affair with This World
“Over twenty five years later I am a credible witness to the grace and mercy of God and his power to transform a broken life into one filled with purpose, and even joy. Yet I don’t say this easily. Years of wrestling to reconcile God’s love with his sovereignty added to the exhaustion of grief. No doubt some of my words during those early years sounded heretical and struck fear into the hearts of trusted friends. But the Lord did not abandon me.” - Unbolted from My Love Affair with This World, by Sharon Betters
When Suffering Comes, Lean on What You Know
"When the disease pains us, our prodigal child grieves us, our friend betrays us, and our marriage is tested, it is natural to wonder what God is doing. Many of us ask, ‘Why, God?”’and our question isn’t wrong in itself. But perhaps the better question is, ‘Why am I asking God why?’” - When Suffering Comes, Lean on What You Know, by Kristen Wetherell
A Tale of Two Tears
"Our tears often express outwardly the toil we feel inwardly as we reconcile the world as we know it with the world as we ought to know it. Tears are the outworking of this obscurity. Tears are the testament to myself, others, and God that I am desperately trying to make sense of the pain that plagues me. Our tears proclaim our measures of faith, or lack thereof. In the act of crying, we are being transformed. Our pain is not useless, our suffering is not unseen, and our tears are not a burden. Our tears are a gift.” - A Tale of Two Tears, by S. A. Morrison
Faith in Anxiety
"I cried often during those months. I wanted to have a testimony of how my faith had helped me through. I knew there were so many people who walked through harder times than ours. I spent my life reading their beautiful testimonies of faith. They would talk about how they saw God’s hand every step of the way. Stories like this made me cry as I read because I knew no matter what I faced we had a faithful God. But they also made me question my faith. Why couldn’t I see God working in my own pain?” - Faith in Anxiety, by Elizabeth Santelmann
How Should We Cry Out to God?
“In so many ways I see the tension between brokenness and beauty, injustice and promised redemption, Jesus’ finished work and the pain that still exists in our world. And as I wander through this broken world with my broken body, I am encouraged by the model I see from the psalmist: a model of honest, true, broken lament that leads to sure, true, steadfast hope. I see him enter into the grief, acknowledge the brokenness, and yet in the midst of it still cling to faith in God. My heart swells at the thought, “could my grief be the very path that leads me to deeper hope?”” - How Should We Cry Out to God? by Lauren Bowerman
Grief's Path To God
“In our grief, we wait. Our souls wait for God to show up, to redeem, to carry us through. We hope in his word, his promises, his character. This is the intersection of pain and promise, this place of waiting in our grief. It may not be the grief of losing someone you love. It may be the death of a dream that you grieve, the loss of a relationship, the disappointment of a spouse’s choices or even the inability to conceive. It may be the loss of an ability, health, or youth. We bring these losses to God and we wait. But notice how we wait.” - Grief’s Path to God, by Christine Gordon and Hope Blanton
Suffering Turns Our Hearts to God
“In suffering and trials, we clearly see our need for God’s help. And when we call out to him, he runs to provide it. He walks with us through dark valleys, assuring us we are never alone (Ps 23:4). He gives us joy in his presence (Ps 16:11), surrounds us with steadfast love (Ps 32:10), revives us with his word (Ps 19: 7), waits to be gracious to us (Is 30:18), and renews our strength (Is 40:31). Our neediness becomes a blessing because it makes us seek the Lord and depend on his strength.” - Suffering Turns Our Hearts to God by Vaneetha Risner
The Lord's Nearness and Our Good
“There are times when we don’t necessarily feel God’s nearness to us. And it is then that it is absolutely vital to regularly be immersing our souls in Scripture. One of the places I consistently turn to is the book of Psalms. The Psalms give us language for our lament and teach us how to pray honestly before the Lord. The Psalms remind us of the character of God and foretell our Savior. In our moments of distress, we cry out, because the psalmists model for us what it’s like to bring all of our feelings and emotions to God.” - The Lord’s Nearness and Our Good by Chelsea Patterson Sobolik
Finding God in Our Anxiety
“It had been a week, and I was still in bed. I was unable to work, drive, or even leave the house. Anxiety had showed up again and knocked me down, leaving me barely functioning. I still had a husband who was writing a dissertation and teaching undergraduate students, three children needing help with all the things, and a job at my church shepherding the women God had brought to us. But as I woke from another night of restless sleep to more intrusive thoughts, movement back to a normal life seemed a distant hope. I felt like I was lost inside my own mind.” - Finding God in Our Anxiety by Hope Blanton and Christine Gordon