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Admit That You Are Stuck and Struggling
For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So, we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
—2 Corinthians 4:17–18 NIV
When things fall apart, the broken pieces allow all sorts of things to enter, and one of them is the presence of God.
—Shauna Niequist
Traffic is bad in most cities at 5:00 PM, and Dallas is no exception. I was sitting at a red light mentally running through the list of everything I needed to do in the next few days. Christian was a junior in high school and had just hit another growth spurt.
- New long pants topped the list.
- I needed to get my nails done since I was teaching at a conference that weekend, which reminded me that . . .
- I needed to pick up my clothes from the dry cleaners.
I was hoping I had something in the freezer I could rustle up for dinner as I didn’t have the energy to face a packed supermarket. As I waited for the light to turn green I looked at the gas gauge and it was creeping toward empty.
I’ll deal with that tomorrow, I thought to myself.
Tomorrow’s list was getting longer. Finally, traffic began to move. The sun was setting as I turned into our cul-de-sac. I waved to my neighbor, playing with his new puppy on the lawn, pulled into our driveway and then the garage. I turned off the ignition, grabbed my purse from the passenger seat, and headed into the house. Through the kitchen window I could see Barry and Christian playing soccer in the last rays of daylight. It made me smile. Barry didn’t grow up playing sports, but he wanted to make sure Christian didn’t miss out on anything.
I turned to open the freezer, and, in that moment, it felt as if someone had stabbed me in my lower back. I cried out in pain. Slowly I turned back around and grabbed hold of the kitchen island. I didn’t know what had happened. I stood there for a moment catching my breath. Gingerly I took a step forward to see if I could walk, and it didn’t hurt; it seemed fine. I decided I must have pinched a nerve for a moment and then it released. I didn’t mention it to Barry that night as he is such a worrier. (Christian and I have affectionately dubbed him Eeyore, after the donkey in the Winnie the Pooh tales who expects disaster to strike at every turn.) I was fine for the next few days, and then one morning as I was getting out of the car it felt as if my back locked and I couldn’t move. Pain shot down my spine and into my leg. Finally, I lowered myself back down into the driver’s seat and waited for the pain to pass. I was afraid to move. It felt as if I might damage something, so I stayed there until Barry came home so that he could help me out of the car.
Over the next few weeks, the episodes of extreme back pain and difficulty walking were happening more frequently. By this point it wasn’t only Barry who was concerned. I knew I needed to see my doctor. When he saw my level of pain and how my ability to walk was being compromised, he referred me to a neurosurgeon. Over the next few weeks I had X-rays and an MRI. Then the doctor ordered a CAT scan with a colored dye injected into my spine. When he had all the results, he called us back into his office. He explained that two of the discs in my lower spine were almost gone and the nerves were being pinched between bone. The pain had now spread from my back down my left leg. I could hardly walk.
“We can try cortisone shots to control the pain and reduce inflammation,” he said. “But I’m not sure that’ll be enough. You may need surgery.”
I decided to start with the shots, as I’d heard some horror stories about back surgeries, so he referred me to a pain management physician. The first cortisone shot didn’t relieve the pain at all; he tried it one more time, but it did nothing. I was getting weaker and experiencing more pain each day. By now I spent most days in bed. I felt like a very old woman, like someone who had lost her life. The clinical depression that had seemed manageable in the past now threatened to swallow me whole. There had been so many wonderful opportunities on the horizon just a few months ago. I had a full schedule of speaking engagements coming up and a door had been opened for me in television, but now it felt as if every door had been slammed in my face and I was alone, outside in the hallway.
Have you ever been there? The circumstances are different for every person, but the feelings are similar. It might be that you believed a relationship you were in was growing and leading to a new place in life. If it was a romantic relationship it felt as if a beautiful door had been opened to your future, and now you saw everything through that door. All your hopes and dreams lay on the other side and then suddenly, with no warning, the door was slammed in your face. I watched that happen to a friend of mine. It was heartbreaking. For her, every negative thing, every unkind word that had ever been spoken to her had been canceled out by the sparkling ring on her left hand. It served as proof to her that she was worth loving. When the engagement was broken off it not only shattered her plans, it shattered her heart and her vision of herself. She seemed to wither like a flower no longer in water. She was alone, outside in the hallway.
Perhaps you’ve longed to be a mom. You’ve watched as your friends have welcomed not only one but two or three children into their families. You celebrate with them, but a little piece of you is aching inside. You’ve done everything you know to do. You’ve put yourself through every punishing and expensive procedure in the hope of becoming a mom, but every time the door is slammed in your face. I received a letter from a woman who didn’t give me her name or an address but gave me a glimpse into her life. She had tried for years to become pregnant, and eventually she and her husband saved up enough money to try in vitro fertilization. I can only imagine her joy when she discovered that she was pregnant, but it was quickly decimated. She carried the baby for eight weeks and then miscarried. What a particularly cruel door to be slammed in your face.
In her letter she asked this question:
“How can a God of love allow this to happen?”
I could almost hear the lonely, desperate wail that rose up from the paper and I wept for her. The door that had so brutally shut left her alone, outside in the hallway.
There are so many things that happen in life that feel like the slamming of a door.
The end of a friendship you cherished.
The loss of a job.
A divorce you never saw coming.
A child cutting you out of their life.
A devastating health issue.
The circumstances are different for each person, but the feelings of being rejected, isolated, or heartbroken are crushing. What makes many of these situations much harder to bear is that you had no choice, no say in the matter. I’ve wondered if the woman who lost her baby didn’t give me a name or address because she felt ashamed at asking her question.
“How can a God of love allow this to happen?”
She should not be ashamed of the question or the anger and pain behind it. Her question matters. How could you lose a child and not cry out, “Why?” How can a God of love allow such things to happen? When we’re afraid to ask those kinds of questions, to rail at God, we’re left alone in our pain. I think that’s one of the hardest things about those door-slamming experiences; you feel alone. If you have loved ones around you, they can sympathize, but they can’t enter in to the depth of the devastation. Life moves on for them but not for you. You are stuck in the hallway. If you don’t have anyone close to you, the night is even darker. I’ve often wondered if some of the epidemic levels of depression and anxiety in our culture stem not simply from a lack of chemicals in the brain but from a lack of connection in our lives. Social media has made us believe we’re not alone. We can look at the number of “followers” we have, but following doesn’t amount to connection. In turn, we can follow a lot of people—famous people we would never meet in our normal lives—and feel as if we have a connection with them, but it’s an illusion. If we met them in the street they would pass us by. Having a smartphone in the hallway doesn’t meet our real human flesh-and-blood needs.
Think about your life for a moment. Can you identify any door-slamming moments? They may be in the past and you’ve moved on, but what did you do with the feelings that often accompany them? In my life, I discovered that burying feelings didn’t make them go away; rather, it led to anger, fear, and depression. I thought I’d moved on, but I was carrying the baggage from those unexpressed raw emotions with me. It might feel more “Christian” not to bring our anger, pain, or disappointment to God, but I believe it’s actually the antithesis of a real relationship with Christ. We become a little less authentic with every experience we bury. Think about it. If you’ve asked God to intervene in a situation, be it for healing or restoration of a relationship, and nothing changes so you simply stuff your feelings, don’t you think it would impact your faith? How would you pray the next time? Would you pray with the same intensity and passion or would you lower the bar of what you believe God can or wants to do? I think the church is full of disappointed Christians who don’t know how to admit it. So, what’s the alternative? Where do we take that pain, those questions when life feels brutal and unfair? How do we pour our hearts out to God when we feel as if He is the one who has let us down?
When I feel let down, I turn to the Word of God. I don’t know what place, if any, God’s Word occupies in your life, but in my life it is water and air; it’s my lifeblood. When I feel alone and adrift, I open the pages to find myself again. The Bible is not a Pinterest app of happy thoughts and motivational quotes; it is full of the honest, heartbroken cries of those who loved God but felt the painful slam of a door in their face.
The prophet Jeremiah was tired of waiting for God to show up:
Why then does my suffering continue?
Why is my wound so incurable?
Your help seems as uncertain as a seasonal brook,
like a spring that has gone dry. (Jer. 15:18)
His cry is clear. Enough, God! I am worn out. When are You going to show up?
Job cursed the day he was born:
Let the day of my birth be erased,
and the night I was conceived.
Let that day be turned to darkness.
Let it be lost even to God on high,
and let no light shine on it. (Job 3:3–4)
If you know any of Job’s story, you’ll remember he lost everything. He was the wealthiest man alive at the time, and all his wealth was wiped out in a day. Then he lost his children. They’d been together in his eldest son’s house when a tornado hit the home and not one of them survived. Then Job lost his health, covered in boils from head to toe. It was too much for anyone to bear. He wished he’d never been born.
In the book of Ruth we meet Naomi, who lost her husband and her two sons. When she returned to her home in Bethlehem she was a broken woman. She was in desperate pain and blamed God for it. As she approached her old home, her friends saw her coming and ran out to welcome her. But she stopped them dead in their tracks:
“Don’t call me Naomi,” she responded. “Instead, call me Mara, for the Almighty has made life very bitter for me. I went away full, but the LORD has brought me home empty. Why call me Naomi when the LORD has caused me to suffer and the Almighty has sent such tragedy upon me?” (Ruth 1:20–21)
God’s Word is full of the honest, desperate, unedited cries of men and women through the centuries who have felt the harsh slam of a door in their faces. They asked the questions we would all ask if we felt we could be honest. Why is it so hard for us to be our authentic, raw selves with God? I believe that one of the underlying issues we struggle with as Christians is reconciling two basic fundamental beliefs:
- God is love.
- God is powerful.
The first is a message woven through the entire Bible—not just that God is loving, but that He is the very essence and source of love. The second: God is powerful, almighty. There are countless stories of God’s intervention, of His power over everything and everyone. So, God loves us and is able to prevent tragedy from striking our lives. Holding those two beliefs as basic to our faith, it’s reasonable to ask, why would an almighty and loving God allow heartbreak to touch us? He clearly is powerful enough to stop bad things from happening, and because He is love, would He not want to? I would love to say that I have an answer for you here, but I don’t. As Paul wrote to the church in Corinth, “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face” (1 Cor. 13:12 ESV).
There are things that happen every day that make no sense at all. That is when I choose, by faith, to remember these things:
- We are living in plan B.
- Christ is the Redeemer in plan B.
- We’re not home yet, and Christ has gone to prepare a place for us.
- Even when the hallway is dark, we are never alone.
The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit. (Ps. 34:18 ESV)
It may feel as if I’ve rushed to that place, but I haven’t. It’s been a long hard road, but as Shauna Niequist observed in the opening quote of this chapter, “When things fall apart, the broken pieces allow all sorts of things to enter, and one of them is the presence of God.”1
Let me finish my story. In the days and weeks that followed the failure of the final cortisone shot, I spent a lot of time in honest conversation with God. I poured out my heart and my questions.
What if I lose the ability to walk?
What if I won’t ever be pain free again?
What if my life that used to look like a wide-open door to the future is now contained in the small walls of my home?
As I brought each very real fear to my heavenly Father, the answer was the same:
I’ll be there.
I’ll be there.
I’ll be there.
As I poured out my fears, I felt held. I felt no judgment, just overwhelming compassion. Sitting with the possibility of a drastic change in how I’d lived up until that point, I saw how I had defined the quality of my life by what I was able to accomplish. I’d placed so much value on what I do rather than on who I am. God’s love for me had nothing to do with whether I ever stood on another stage or wrote another book or traveled another mile. I also saw how at times my understanding of God’s love for me was based on how things were unfolding in my life. When things were going well, I felt that God loved me. When things were hard, I felt alone. The unfolding showed me He is always near.
Coming face-to-face with the truth that my life might never again be what I wanted shook my faith to the core, but it was a good shaking. It shook loose things that were cultural beliefs, not scriptural truths. It shook the belief that I had surrendered everything to Christ when I still felt so entitled to the life I wanted for myself. It shook the belief that I was living by faith when I was actually living by what made sense to me. I also discovered that God meets us in the shaking when we look for Him there.
I remembered the great promise that the boy shepherd, David, wrote:
Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil,
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff,
they comfort me. (Ps. 23:4 ESV)
There is nowhere on this earth that you and I find ourselves where we are separated from the love and companionship of Christ. The writer to the Hebrews put it this way:
For God has said,
“I will never fail you.
I will never abandon you.” (Heb. 13:5)
I made a beautiful discovery. God not only lives in the wide-open spaces of our lives, God lives in the hallway, and His presence can be most keenly felt when the door has been slammed in our face. So many of the distractions that had filled my life had numbed me to the whole point of my life: to bring glory to God, to know Him, to allow the Holy Spirit to invade every space. I began to worship in the hallway.
It was time for me to be open to whatever the next season in life might hold, so I made a follow-up appointment to see the neurosurgeon. He made it clear that he could do the surgery, but it would be complicated: “I’ll have to go through your back to remove one disc and through the front to be able to get the other. It’ll give you some interesting scars and your bikini days might be over!”
I reassured him that since I was raised as a Scottish Baptist that was not a concern. A surgery date was set.
It was still dark when Barry and I arrived at the hospital that morning. I checked in and was taken back to a cubicle where I changed into a gown and had an IV put in my right hand. Barry was right beside me, but let me tell you this: Christ’s presence was so palpable it was as if I could take His hand. Not only that, there was a peace about the outcome. I wish I could sit down face-to-face with you right now as I write that. It’s easy to write faith statements when you emerge from a dark tunnel, but I want you to know I had His peace in the not knowing. Christ offers peace in the not-knowing seasons.
The surgeon came in and introduced me to a second surgeon.
“She’ll hold your organs while I go through the front of your body.”
It’s hard to know what to say to that.
Thank you?
Try to put them back where you found them?
The primary surgeon told Barry that the procedure would be about six hours and he’d let Barry know when it was over. As they wheeled me into surgery my last conscious thought was, as the surgery door closed, I surrender all.
I remember coming to in recovery and Barry asking if I could wiggle my toes? I thought it was a such a silly question from a grown man until I remembered where I was. So, I wiggled. Within a few days I could tell that the surgery had been a success and I could walk without pain.
The outcome for you might have been different. As you read this you might be in the most challenging days of your life. When you can’t see an end to a situation, it’s hard not to give in to despair. Again, I look to the apostle Paul:
For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. (2 Cor. 4:17–18 NIV)
If you’re not familiar with that letter or Paul’s life it’s easy to dismiss his words. When he writes about light and momentary troubles he can seem out of touch with your world. As you look at what you’re facing right now, light or momentary are probably not the words you would chose. But we need to read on. Paul has so much to share with us. First of all, he lets us in on just how extreme his suffering has been so that we don’t discount his words, but then he gives us two gifts that will help us when we find ourselves in the hallway. First, his credentials in suffering:
Five different times the Jewish leaders gave me thirty-nine lashes. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked. Once I spent a whole night and a day adrift at sea. I have traveled on many long journeys. I have faced danger from rivers and from robbers. I have faced danger from my own people, the Jews, as well as from the Gentiles. I have faced danger in the cities, in the deserts, and on the seas. And I have faced danger from men who claim to be believers but are not. I have worked hard and long, enduring many sleepless nights. I have been hungry and thirsty and have often gone without food. I have shivered in the cold, without enough clothing to keep me warm. (2 Cor. 11:24–27)
I can’t imagine that level of suffering. And yet Paul suffered even more. You can read about Paul’s stoning in Acts 14.
Stoning was never intended to be a punishment; it was always intended as a death sentence. It’s a particularly barbaric way to die, still practiced in some areas of the world. Men are buried up to their waists, women to their chests. To prolong the suffering, no one is permitted to throw a large stone. Everyone who is offended by the condemned one had to be able to take part in the execution and throw their own stone. It’s a slow death. So, when they stoned Paul, they assumed they had killed him.
They stoned Paul and dragged him out of town, thinking he was dead. (Acts 14:19)
The list of Paul’s sufferings is overwhelming, so why does he call it “light and momentary”? I believe he does for two reasons. For one, we look around us. For the second, we look up.
The first reason is that nothing you walk through is wasted with God. He redeems every drop of our suffering.
I can’t comfort a woman who’s lost a child, but if you have lost one, you can. She’ll listen to you because you understand.
I can’t comfort a woman whose husband walked out, leaving her financially stressed with children to raise, but if you have experienced that, you can.
I can’t comfort a woman who longs to be a mom and can’t conceive, but if you have been there, you can.
You may not be able to comfort someone who lost a loved one to suicide, but I can.
You might struggle to understand severe depression and mental illness and not know what to say, but I do understand and can offer help.
This is the beauty of brokenness. When we face our losses in the hallway with God and offer the broken pieces to Him, it’s amazing what He will do to bind up the broken pieces in someone else’s life. This is how our brave brother Paul described it:
God is our merciful Father and the source of all comfort. He comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others. When they are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us. (2 Cor. 1:3b–4)
The second gift Paul gives us in this letter is to remind us who we are and where we’re going.
That is why we never give up. Though our bodies are dying, our spirits are being renewed every day. For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever! So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever. (4:16–18)
He reminds us that although life can be very painful, pain and loss have a shelf life, suffering and struggle have an expiration date. They will not last forever. I imagine Paul sitting with you right now in the hallway, saying, “Come on. Hold on. Look up. Remember whose you are, and this won’t last forever.”
More than that, Christ is with you in the hallway. He is with you in the operating room. He is with you wherever you are. Right now, you are not alone. Taking the next step can be as simple as this: Acknowledge your struggle to God. Tell Him how it felt to hear the slamming of the door. Let Him know that you are lonely and hurt. Let Him sit with you in the hallway and hear Him say,
I’m here.
I’m here.
I’m here.
God never rushes us through our pain. He sits with us for as long as it takes. But as you begin to receive His comfort, you might look around and see that you’re not alone in the hallway. There’s someone else there, and they can’t even lift their head. They might not listen to me, but they just might listen to you. Perhaps you’d be willing to join me in a prayer I pray every single day:
Lord, give me eyes to see what I might miss. Give me ears to hear beyond what someone might be saying to what’s happening in their heart.
Jesus is the Redeemer in the hallway.
