This is the first post in my series Trusting God When It’s Not Okay, written while I’m still in the middle of a hard season.
This year has been really hard, and I’m not going to get into all the details, mostly because I’m still in the middle of it. But for months I’ve been going back and forth in this cycle where something happens and I panic, and I start trying to figure out how to fix it or get out of it. Then eventually, sometimes a few days later, I get to a place where I can say, “Okay Lord, I don’t understand what’s going on or where this is going, but I trust you.”
A couple of things happened recently that helped me understand what’s going on in that cycle, and I wanted to share them.
I was talking with a friend recently, and he brought up Jesus’s temptation in the wilderness before he started his ministry. He pointed out that what the devil tempted Jesus with wasn’t anything Jesus hadn’t already been promised. The kingdoms of the world were already his. What the devil was actually offering was a way to get those promises without going through the cross.
When he said that, it was like something clicked for me. I believe there’s an other side to what I’m going through. I’ve felt God tell me that more than once. But I realized I’ve been trying to get to the other side without walking the path that gets me there. I want the promise without the hard part.
Then my friend brought up Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, where he’s sweating drops of blood and asking God, if there’s any other way, let’s do that instead. But then something shifts. He becomes resolved, and for the rest of the story, we never hear him ask to get out of it again. I thought that was really interesting. He didn’t want to go through it, and he was honest with God about that. But at some point he stopped going back and forth and just went.
A few days later I was getting ready to teach my Emotionally Healthy Spirituality class, and we were on the chapter about the wall. Peter Scazzero talks about hitting his own wall, his own dark night of the soul, and trying to go over it or around it or under it, anything except actually going through it. And only God could bring him through.
I felt really convicted reading that, because that’s exactly what I’ve been doing. I’ve been trying to avoid the pain of what I’m going through by taking things into my own hands, and in the process I’ve been trying to avoid whatever it is God is trying to teach me. And honestly, I think that’s where a lot of the panic has been coming from, the trying to get around it.
I’m not totally sure what God is doing. I know part of it is about trust, about believing he’s going to take care of me and come through for me, even if it gets worse before it gets better. But that still feels pretty abstract to me right now.
What I do know is that I want to stop waffling. I’d still rather not go through this, and I’ve told God that. But I’m asking him to help me be willing to go through it anyway, the way Jesus did.
If you’re up against a wall right now, I don’t think you have to have it figured out. You can be honest with God that you’d rather go around it. Jesus was. But maybe the next step is just asking him to help you be willing to go through.
Written by Kristen Davis, Ph.D., founder of DoubtLess Faith. I also walk alongside people one-on-one as a faith coach. If you’re in a hard season and would like someone to walk through it with you, you can book a session here.
