A faith-based guide to living after letdown and seeing God in the not-so-good.
Prologue
This is a super quick read! Every chapter is just one page; straight to the point.
This is a free resource available to everyone but it’s not necessarily for everyone. It was written for broken-hearted people; for those wrestling in a season of hopelessness; and dealing with distressing situations out of their control and unlikely to change. If you’re not in that headspace, or have never been, you won’t be able to understand the weight of the demand here.
As you’re reading this, it’s important you know I haven’t “been there, done that.”
Quite the opposite. I usually find myself at the end of my rope begging God to help, to heal, to bring me back to life. It has been so perplexing being happier and healthier but still finding myself… hurting.
I wish the process was linear. I wish it was only on it’s way up from here. But the way forward looks much more jagged than I like to admit. In these pages, I’m telling you everything I tell myself. This is the way I think; the way I try to direct my soul.
There’s a real difference between living life and leading in life. It’s very easy to let the enemy push us along as we become a consequence of all that’s happened to us. We tend to get lost in the feeling of powerlessness; feeling like collateral damage; feeling hopeless. In this guide, I will challenge you to grow when you don’t want to; to be thankful in every circumstance… finding life, and eternal value, in who you become in the situations that were meant to destroy you.
Choose to go through hard things with God, rather than without Him. Do things that may not feel natural: dance while you grieve, give thanks while facing loss, connect when you prefer to isolate, forgive when you can’t forget, obey God when you don’t feel like it. I’ve found that despite my prayers for God to change my situation or change other people, He often changes me first. I reluctantly make the choice to let Him.
I don’t know you but I know life is hard and bad things happen to good people. There’s illness, loss, betrayal, infertility, and a long list of other disappointments that could have led you here. It’s not my intention to make your problems seem small. Just know there is hope and “peace that surpasses all understanding.” There is light at the end of the tunnel. And even if you don’t see it, there are eternal rewards for walking this out.
If this is for you, I just want you to know that God can be trusted. He can be trusted with the ashes in your life.
In your great love, revive me.
psalms 119:149
The Ruins
Day and night I have only tears for food, while my enemies taunt me, saying, “Where is this God of yours?”
psalms 42:3
Have you ever felt like you were watching your life fall apart right before your eyes? Like you’re watching a movie and you‘re helpless to change the plot.
Something earth-shattering happens and it causes a drastic and unavoidable fracture in your life. You can see all the ways things might fall apart. Maybe in your mind you create a plan to fix it, or at the very least, prepare for impact.
But no matter what, it cannot be undone. It cannot be taken back. It completely changes your story and suddenly your bright and once-predictable future turns into a bottomless chasm.
Darkness has completely defied the laws of science and has somehow managed to swallow up all the light.
This critical moment steals your sense of security and the joy you once had. It looks for the chance to steal your love for people and begs you to give up entirely. You’re tempted to avoid the pain and silently quit. You search for a way out. But there is none. Suddenly, it’s not a moment anymore. It has stretched into a season that chips away at your mind, your identity, your health, your faith, and your relationships. It’s breaking your heart and ruining your soul. The agenda of your enemy is clear: to rob you of your purpose, to end you and your loved ones, and to destroy what you treasure.
Health is failing. Needs are going unmet. Dreams are unrealized. And people, even the good ones, have failed. Your world has stopped while the rest of the world moves on. You want desperately to remain intact; to preserve what remains; to fight for what matters. But you’re growing weak because there is an insurmountable pain – a gaping hole that was once filled with good things. You’re building a wall that life is determined to tear down. Words cannot encapsulate the pain of the grave, the rejection, the crime, the bankruptcy, the diagnosis, or the trauma. And it doesn’t matter that you had no chance to prepare for this war. It doesn’t matter that it’s not your fault.
Because in the end there’s a cloud of dust, a pile of rubble, and torn down walls where your life used to be.
The Remnant
The widow cried out… Elisha asked. “Tell me, what do you have in the house?” “Nothing at all, except a flask of olive oil,” she replied.
2 kings 4:1-2
Losing time. Losing loved ones. Losing hope for the future or faith in God. Fill in the blank. Loss usually carries with it, a weight of finality.
It can feel all-consuming because real loss means there is no real solution. Whatever you lost, you don’t get back.
Sometimes we’re just gutted by the realization that what we dreamed won’t be reality. That feeling of “wanting what you can’t have” is so much more painful when you know you had it before. There’s a huge gap between before and after that is filled with unanswered questions.
Read 2 Kings 4:1-7 because what I’m going to say here is based on my interpretation of that passage.
If you’ve dealt with incomprehensible loss this is going put pressure on a wound that will always be tender to the touch. Your loss is blinding you. If you put yourself in the position of the widow, loss is lying to her by telling her the truth. “You lost your husband, your provider, your protector. You’re on the brink of losing your children. You have nothing left.” Loss will remind you of what was taken away.
It will use the unmet expectation or the memory of what was as the defining principle for what will be. And because things will never be the same, or never be what you thought, in the end, it will always convince you that you have nothing. I challenge you to be willing to take inventory of your life as it is right now and notice what remains. Search for the fragments of good things left over. No matter how big, how small, or how seemingly insignificant. Then add to it. Build around it. In taking inventory of what you have, you also have to accept what you don’t have. That can be hard to deal with.
Connect with people. If you have empathetic, wise, Spirit-led people supporting you, they’ll know just the right way to be there for you.
When you don’t have faith you can endure, lean on your friends’ faith. When you don’t have hope for the future, borrow some from your friends. Sometimes people on the outside make the most room for God to step in.
When you make it through this, I think you’ll find you’ve built a legacy for others to live on what you did with what you had.
The Recovery
My health may fail, and my spirit may grow weak, but God remains the strength of my heart; He is mine forever.
psalms 73:26
In the absence of a miracle, healing tends to be a process.
And when you’ve faced unforeseeable circumstances, it can really throw you for a loop (especially when it also comes with a great deal of pain).
Life educates us. It teaches us of its unfairness. It teaches us that no matter how much we try, we’re completely out of control. We learn it’s only the people we love, that have the power to betray us. We can’t always avoid accidents. We can’t always avoid illness. We can’t always avoid death or disappointment or hardship.
When I was little, I used to spend some nights at my grandmother’s house. She would tell me stories of her life long ago that still brought tears to her eyes. I didn’t understand that. If it was over and things are better, why was she crying? People who love you may not get it. That’s okay. Release them from that expectation. It’s nice, but it’s not necessary.
God understands the depth of your pain – how you feel it and how you show it. Go to your Heavenly Father, when you feel like you can’t go to anyone else.
There’s only one thing I can promise you and it’s not that things will get better, it’s that things can get better. It’s very possible to stay stuck in your pain. The choice to find healing and happiness, from this point forward, is yours.
If the suffering is not taken away, it’s not wrong to ask God to remove the sting. Continue praying for it: for something complete and miraculous. Ask Him to heal your heart. But don’t abandon the work in the meantime. Just ask Him to make up the difference when you’ve given it all you’ve got, and all you’ve got is not enough.
Be patient with yourself. Give yourself grace in moments that hurt intensely. There is no right way to go about this. No set amount of time. And God doesn’t grow tired of comforting you. He is close to the brokenhearted. And he knows exactly when to let you be where you are and when to help you take the next step forward.
Don’t grow cold or isolate yourself from people willing to comfort you. There is surprising strength in God, when you’re feeling weak.
The Reconciliation
My heart is confident in You, O God; my heart is confident. No wonder I can sing your praises!
psalms 57:7
Have you ever had a moment where you felt like putting your relationship with God on pause? You’re just not feeling it anymore. You don’t want to pray or read your Bible. You don’t feel like going to church. You don’t feel like following Him.
The moment I feel like separating from God, that is a red flag that I have not reconciled correctly. To reconcile means to make an account; to make an agreement. It’s the way I’ve aligned my thoughts and my heart to the knowledge of God. Either I have managed my thoughts or my thoughts have managed me. The tendency to want to want to distance yourself from the Father usually has some emotional component: anger, sadness, bitterness, apathy. You can’t fake intimacy here. This is the space where your God is real. This is the place where “adversity introduces a man himself.” This is where unforgiveness likes to hide; where your true knowledge of God and His character really stands. All the lies the enemy has tried to convince you of, take refuge in this spot. What do you do with your disappointment? Who do you say God is? Who do you become?
If you’re not guarding your heart and renewing your mind, you’re risking a lot. Left unchecked, this distance can ruin your intimacy with God, destroy your identity, mess up your relationships, steal your legacy, and ruin the quality of your character.
If your difficult moments are separating you from God, make the conscious choice to turn to Him through prayer. Ask God to point out things that need to be healed; lies that need to be shut up; a stubborn will that needs to bend, revelation that needs to be really known. Your deepest darkest moments should cause you to run to Him, desperately. I guarantee you: God is really good. This fallen world may have shattered you. People might have disappointed you. And the circumstances you’re dealing with may be heartbreaking. But there is no one in Heaven or on Earth that can be more trusted with your confidence, more deserving of your time, or more worthy of your devotion and obedience than Him.
The Restoration
… Those who survive the coming destruction will find blessings even in the barren land, for I will give rest to the people of Israel… I will rebuild you, you will again be happy and dance merrily.
jeremiah 31:1-4
How desperate we can become searching for a sense of power when we feel completely powerless! If only life allowed do-overs… we could make it so pain was avoided. There would be no collateral damage, no lingering side effects, no loss.
As a kid, I used to wonder why we didn’t rebuild after 9/11. Why didn’t we rise from the ashes bigger and better than ever? It could have been a sign of our strength; our ability to bring back what was destroyed.
However, for the people who lost the most, rebuilding was just a reminder of the trauma and incredible loss. Some things are just irreplaceable. Whether it was rebuilt or not, it would never be what it was. I find it so interesting that we chose to make a memorial instead: a way to commemorate what was without replacing it.
When we hear the term restoration, we often think of things being rebuilt. We think restoration means that things will go back to normal. But what does it mean for the person who refuses to be comforted; because what is gone is gone for good?
For them, restoration means repairing the damage. Re-establishing yourself in your new normal. Revising your plan. Reconstructing your life so that the world becomes a little bit bigger than the massive hole in the ground. It can be an excruciating process: trying to muster up hope for the future when you have to face the constant aftermath of the past. It’s not for the faint of heart; trying to forget former things to press on toward what’s ahead.
The promise of finding blessing, even in a barren land, stirs us up to see hope in hopeless places. It pushes us to envision something completely new. I challenge you to notice the new things; things that pave the way for something really good. When we’re blinded by the desolation, let’s ask God for His help to perceive the way through, like Isaiah 43 says. Restoration isn’t just about God giving us back everything we lost. I’d argue, it’s more likely about Him bringing us back. Bringing us back from the pit, from the pain of the past, and returning us into His arms when we’ve gotten lost.
The Redemption
Take my side and defend me in these sufferings; redeem me and revive me, just like You promised You would.
psalms 119:154
Redemption: a term that points to the thing that fills in the gap and makes up the difference. It makes up for the bad, for the faults of another person, and takes responsibility. It pays the price, makes an exchange, follows through with what was promised.
There are so many verses illustrating the way that God steps in for us: as a father, as a husband, as a healer, as a leader, and as a Savior. It’s often in recognizing our need that we also learn to recognize Him.
In the infinite list of things that can bring us satisfaction, Jesus is the only one who is permanent, enduring, and everlasting.
I love the verses in the Bible that remind us of who God is and how He is with us. They almost always remind us of who we are because of Him.
The demands of life sometimes compete with who we say God is. We also have a habit of defining ourselves by our circumstances. What do we do in the space between what we know in our heads and what we know in our hearts? What do we do when we’re left in situations that seem to define us?
There’s one command I see often in the Bible, in those kinds of verses I love so much. Fear not…
Fear tends to grip us; tries to convince us that we are not safe so that we stay stuck or abandon our mission. It tells us to take matters into our own hands and leads us to completely forget who we are or whose we are in the process. Fear will convince you it is the only one looking out for you. It’s not true.
I love Ruth 4:14 because it says, “Blessed be the Lord, who has not left you this day without a redeemer.” Can I remind you of something you may have forgotten? God has not left you without a way through. You are not alone. You have not been abandoned. You have not been forgotten. God is your redeemer. He fills in the gap. He makes up the difference. He makes up for the faults of another person. He intervenes for your sake. He follows through with what was promised. And He causes everything to work together for the good of those who love Him.
The Rejoicing
Those who sow with tears will reap with songs of joy.
psalms 126:5
Out of all the pages I’ve written, this one seems to be the most difficult to wrap my head around. I wouldn’t describe myself as a joyful person. Part of me knows that joy is not something I muster up on my own.
Joy is a fruit of the Holy Spirit. Real joy comes from letting the Him take the lead. That’s a Biblical truth. When we submit to His authority and follow His direction, it bears fruit in us and around us. It comes from doing life with Him.
Joy is also a promise though. It’s a promise set before us.
In this chapter of my life, joy has not been the absence of grief. But I can say without a doubt, my moments of greatest joy have been the moments where I feel like my spirit saw God most clearly. In that space, I saw the nature of God shock me. I saw Him proud of me. I saw Him claiming me as a daughter. I saw Him eager to give good things. I saw hope for the future. I saw the kind of forgiveness that holds no record of wrongdoings. The one thing that ties all these experiences together is that these moments of joy were always connected to my worship. It was always singing and dancing, especially when it didn’t make sense. For me, that’s where I found my joy.
So many things bring me such great happiness, but when they’re gone there is nothing to fill the space. After divorce, my daughter is an example of that. I can’t tell you how happy my heart is with her, and how empty it feels without her.
If you’re struggling to find joy, I first, want to let you know that it’s normal. We really do need the Holy Spirit for this. Second, I want you to hold unto the promise of joy; believing that it’s coming for you. Let your heart remain tender and receptive while you wait for it. Third, know that God is so deeply compassionate. He’s kept track of all your weeping and He’s held all your tears in a bottle. He’s not only aware of you, He is intimately concerned with you! He’s ever so close to those who are brokenhearted. And, finally, ask the Holy Spirit to help you see God clearly, especially as you worship. Let that be your secret place of joy.
The Revelation
You love Him even though you have never seen Him. Though you do not see Him now, you trust Him; and you rejoice with a glorious, inexpressible joy.
1 peter 1:8
To this day, one of the most challenging disciplines I’ve worked on is putting an eternal and spiritual perspective on things that just don’t make sense.
I consciously ask myself: where is God in the middle of this? What is Heaven’s agenda here? The answer isn’t always obvious. Sometimes it’s hard to see God in the middle of the chaos. Because what is so blatantly obvious is what happened; what is right in front of me; what I see with my own eyes.
It’s especially hard to see God when he doesn’t show up in the way that you wanted; when he doesn’t do what you asked; when the outcome isn’t what you prayed for. It’s easy and effortless to not see God in your situation, especially when you’re looking for Him in the wrong place or simply not looking for Him at all.
The mental stronghold or lie the enemy often leads me to believe is that God is not a winner. The lie he’s most popular for is that God is not not all-powerful because we don’t see the reward, or the outcome, or the answer.
Another lie the devil tells us is that God is not good or does not care, because if He did He would show up the way that we expected.
And I’m always drawn back to the life of Jesus and the way He submitted even unto death in order to give us eternal life. Jesus came into the world in a way we didn’t expect. He died. It wasn’t what we wanted and it wasn’t necessarily what He prayed for. But He was also raised from the grave and every act of His obedience echoes from generation to generation and has eternal consequences.
There is an endless sea of questions for almost every possible hardship we can face on this earth. Seek out all the answers you can from the word of God. But I challenge you to pray for peace, steadiness, and steadfastness in the mysteries and sovereignty of God. Pray for an unwavering and resilient faith in His character when the situation doesn’t make sense. When the enemies schemes are laid out in front of you, search for God’s heart and listen for His still small voice.
The Revival
He asked me, “Can these bones live?” I said, “Lord, only You know.”
ezekial 37:3
There is such a challenge when we find ourselves in the middle of a valley, saying to ourselves: we’re dried up, our hope is gone, there’s nothing left of us. It’s in that emptiness that we feel like part of us has died. There’s nothing within our power here. Every hope, every thread of strength, is only in God.
Psalms 119 is filled with prayers for revival. Notice how they also point to where revival is found.
The prayers go something like this: Revive me by your word; Let your righteousness revive my spirit; In your unfailing love preserve my life; Redeem me and revive me, just like you promised; Your tender mercies are what I need, give me back my life again; In your tender kindness, breathe life into me again. I will never forget your precepts, your regulations, your rules, your laws for by them you have preserved my life.
Revival is not a thing that can be manufactured. It cannot be conjured up and it cannot be realized without the active presence of God in our daily life. I’d argue that revival is only truly obtained when you have an unwavering revelation of who God really is; to the point where you even find comfort in God’s rules because you know they’re life-giving. Revival can be a powerful, supernatural, and instantaneous miracle but I believe it can also be found in our daily awareness of who God is. Even if you have an encounter, in order to sustain it, you have to really KNOW Him.
If you find yourself alone in the ruins, lifeless in the battlefield; if you feel like a shadow of the person you used to be, in a valley that has gone completely dark – you are in the perfect place, and in the most appropriate condition, to be revived. I echo the prayers in Psalms 119; that God would unveil Himself and bring you back. If this is for you, I’m believing in the goodness of God to find you right where you are.
In the meantime, let’s challenge ourselves to find comfort in the attributes of God and believe He turns graves into gardens. He’s the only one who can.
The Refining
Remain in me, and I in you. Just as a branch is unable to produce fruit by itself unless it remains on the vine, neither can you unless you remain in me.
john 15:4
You cannot do this alone. And even when you have people around you, supporting you, and encouraging you, you cannot do this without Jesus.
You just can’t.
I think for the most part a lot of us know this. But sometimes when things start looking up it’s easy to forget to lean on Him. And even for the low places, sometimes we spend so much energy trying to pick up the pieces of our lives on our own, we forget we have someone willing to help.
There are ebbs and flows here; highs and lows. There are moments when we’re strong and moments when we’re weak. Moments when we’re stable and moments when we’re not.
Always choose to look in His direction. Make it a practice to go to Him first. When something great has happened, give Him thanks for it. When you’re looking for a solution, ask Him what His thoughts are. And even when you just need someone, practice going to Him first, even before you go to your people, just so that you can learn to be aware of the fact that you have Him!
As a person who has always been determined to grow, I can’t even begin to tell you how exhausting it is fighting to heal, fighting to forgive, fighting to love your enemies, fighting to love the way God loves when you’re broken, bitter, or just angry.
You can’t pretend you’re in a better place than you are. You can’t pretend you are further along. The secret to living a life you love after lament is in being close and remaining in Him.
I’ve learned that God knows exactly how to be; He knows exactly what to say; when to challenge me and when to let me be. He does it all perfectly. And He never fails to show up in the way that I need Him; even when it means going back to step one.
He doesn’t abandon the work of pruning us while He tends to our wounds and cares for our hearts. It develops our strength of character.
This process of looking up to your Heavenly Father, holding His hand, and following His lead is one that reveals the truth of our relationship with God as a son or as a daughter. This is where He makes us His own.
