The Dark Night
You know those times when God is clearly trying to point you to something?
Thing one: I happen to be going through a Bible study on prayer during a time when prayer feels impossible. Next, I run across a podcast about depression and suffering while I'm facing a very similar season, and it hits hard. And now, I have reached the book of Job in my yearly Bible reading plan and I see through these similar threads that God, more than ever, is bestowing upon me the blessing of teaching me how to trust Him. A lesson I didn’t think I’d have to keep learning after many years of following Christ.
Job had plenty of reason to question whether God is truly just. God said himself that Job was innocent (Job 1:8). However, I know that I am far from innocent without the intervention of Christ. I know that I have plenty of reason for God to judge me according to my iniquities, but He doesn't (Ps. 103:10). Because Christ took on that judgment. And yet, despite the outward appearance of the good life, full of gifts I can't even count, my mind is often still attacked. My body experiences the brokenness of this world. My heart can't always believe the way it should.
When the pain makes an appearance, I often describe it as sitting in a room that's getting increasingly smaller, closing in on me with malleable walls that conform to my body, until I'm suffocating. Eventually, when it releases me into exhaustion, I am not yet free —I suddenly feel a sense that I'm falling with nowhere to land, still terrified that the room will close in on me again. This is the tumultuous, paradoxical presence of anxiety and depression.
Life lately has been full of change - the bittersweet transition from a job that I loved for 6.5 years to a new and exciting opportunity that I already love just as deeply. I also recently lost my Nana at 95, my last and most beloved grandparent, and I probably underestimated the grief that would follow me. What’s more, I’m attempting to make plans for my future while still healing from my past. Good things blended with hard things—and it’s still so much to carry. But anyone who has ever struggled with anxiety knows that when you’re in it, you rarely have the insight to understand the source of the problem, especially since it feels that your body is reacting disproportionately. I am often so blinded by the pain that I can’t see what’s bearing down on me.
The enemy knows that I'll do anything I can to deny that the problem should exist in the first place. He says: if you were truly "in Christ," would you really be struggling with this? If you truly believed in His promises, you wouldn't allow fear to suffocate you. And there I end up, not only fighting for breath, but fighting for belief that the breath will ever come.
"Lord, I believe - help my unbelief" (Mark 9:24) is my cry in these darker days. Because of course I believe, but sometimes my body doesn't. Sometimes, as I beg for the pain to be eradicated, God is asking me to trust in Him whether or not He removes that pain.
I search high and low, like Job's friends, for something I'm doing wrong. Maybe I'm not praying the right prayer. Maybe I'm not doing enough. Maybe I'm missing some hidden sin (even in Christ, I am still fighting my flesh, as we all are). I often think there's something within my control that can take this away. And yes, while God's gifts of medicine and counseling and the comfort of Scripture reminding me to be anxious for nothing (Phil. 4:6) can go far in easing the anxiety, I still know that ultimately I cannot control what comes tomorrow.
That's what He may be asking me to truly embrace- the knowledge that I am not even remotely in control, and I can trust that He has been and always will be Sovereign, even over the little things (Matt. 10:29–31). In this process He instills in me the desire to pray—alongside the obvious prayer that I be healed from my suffering—that through my suffering I will just be assured that He is with me, knowing that He is not unacquainted with my grief (Heb. 4:15). He instills in me the desire to see His will be done, knowing that He always answers our prayers, even if the answer is different from what we expect (Matt. 7:7-11). I have asked, sought, and knocked, and have received more and more of this assurance with each painful day. Through months of these days He is reorienting me, shaping me, and sees every one of my tears. There will be a day when He will wipe those tears from my eyes (Rev. 21:4), these afflictions will pass away, and we will feast together in His house (Rev.19:9).
It’s so difficult to reconcile the fact that God’s gifts may not always seem “good” in our eyes. We tend to attribute God’s goodness only to the joyful things in life; we only feel “blessed” when everything is falling into place according to our plans. In our shiny, white-picket-fence-social posts, we cry God is good! and yet we declare this very little in the middle of the pain. We have a hard time entertaining the possibility that suffering could be a gift from God, intended for our ultimate good. Because in my case, suffering has been one of the most effective gifts in bringing me closer to knowing and experiencing the God of the universe.
When it comes down to it, all of my walking and chamomile tea and medical interventions and even Biblical counseling can only succeed in light of my ultimate hope: Christ alone. Yes, He gifts us with practical ways to confront the enemy’s schemes against our minds. But all in all, they are worthless without the truth of the gospel– that I am more flawed and broken and wicked than I even know, but He is more abundantly loving and merciful than I could ever possibly comprehend (Rom. 7:24-25). That’s my reason to carry on, with His light as my guide through the darkness (Rom. 8:18, 37-39). And allowing me to understand that with greater certainty is one of my most treasured gifts from the Father.
Friend, if you are walking through a similar pain today, you are not alone. Let's be vulnerable with each other and lament to the Lord together. And when that feels impossible, know that He is still with you. I’ve had moments when it seemed that no words could possibly comfort me —even today —so I understand that feeling, and I write these words to encourage myself just as much as anyone else. We can be assured that the Holy Spirit intercedes for us when words don’t come. Our Father can hold us in this paradox of hope and pain even in the darkest of nights.
