When Sorrow Overwhelms

Where do we turn when life gets hard? What are we to do when we begin to feel the depression sink in deep, when the sorrow and the grief wash over us and settle like fog in the valley? Sometimes it seems that no matter how hard we try or how hard we pray we can't pull ourselves out of the pain. The heartache overwhelms, and the days feel long. When the thought of work stirs up anxiety, and home becomes suffocating, we stumble through life, we go through the motions. We become vacant, absent from the day to day activities, living life veiled, without clarity. We begin to wonder if this is all there is, is this how we will spend the rest of our days? Facing the day feels too hard, and it is all we can do not to crawl back under the covers, to spend our day trying to sleep off the pain. Our focus begins to be overwhelmed with trying to numb the feelings, trying to move past it, telling ourselves that it's been long enough, surely we shouldn't still be here, we should have moved on. It is these moments, weeks, months, that cause the hopelessness to settle in. We begin to believe the lies, maybe God's not in control, maybe he doesn't care, maybe he's too busy for me, maybe this is all there is.

 

What do we do then, how do we get to the place where we can be "joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer" (Romans 12:12)?

 

As these days become longer, harder, more frequent we need to find hope. Hope in the promises of Christ. We begin by methodically reading the verses that tell us, He loves us, He is in control, He knows our pain and our sorrow, He is sovereign. Scrawling the promises of God on our mirrors to read when we get up in the morning "So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand" (Isaiah 41:10). Repeating them as we go through our day, leaving them on our bedside tables, our window sills, wherever we might pause to whisper the words of God. Reminding ourselves that this too is a season, that God has said: "the time will come when I will heal Jerusalem’s wounds and give it prosperity and true peace" (Jeremiah 33:3). What a day it will be when we can experience true peace. Hope begins to seep in, it begins to stir the heart, to turn our eyes from ourselves and our pain to those around us, and to God who can do all things.

 

Sometimes the grief overwhelms so intensely that even prayer feels impossible. How do we make it, how do we feed the hope in our lives when we can't find the strength to pray? Where do we go from that point when all seems lost? We must reach out, we must look for those who will stand in the gap. This is hard, we have to put aside pride, and in humility ask for help. Seek out those who will pray, those who will come along side and do for us what we can't seem to muster. When we are willing to do this amazing things happen. The power of intercessory prayer is profound! Those who have come alongside have literally prayed the heaviness, the sorrow, the depression off our shoulders. Not to say that grief will not overwhelm again, those dark days are likely to return, but we now know there is hope. There is hope that we can walk through the dark valley, and come out the other side. 

 

At this point the prayers of those who love us, who we have reached out to, those who have walked in grief themselves, have literally eased the suffering. When the days became too much, when we didn't think things would change, we asked that people pray. Within a few days of our hopeless plea we felt a change, a fog was lifted, it was astounding. We began living the Psalmist's praise, believing its truths:  

I waited patiently for the Lord to help me,
and he turned to me and heard my cry.
² He lifted me out of the pit of despair,
out of the mud and the mire.
He set my feet on solid ground
and steadied me as I walked along.
³ He has given me a new song to sing,
a hymn of praise to our God.
Many will see what he has done and be amazed.
They will put their trust in the Lord.

⁴ Oh, the joys of those who trust the Lord,
who have no confidence in the proud
or in those who worship idols.

                                           Psalm 40:1-4

 

 

For those who are walking through dark days that feel hopeless, exhausting, and overwhelming, I encourage you to write out the promises of God, dwell on his words, read them over and over until you repeat them to yourself as you go about your day, and ask for prayer. Find those you trust and ask them to pray for you. The power of God's people praying together produces miracles. I also encourage you to pray for others, sometimes when we take our eyes off ourselves long enough to pray for those in need we are encouraged. When we see our prayers for others answered we begin to feel hope again, and we begin to trust that God will answer prayer. That this can happen for us too.

 

I encourage everyone else to pray for those around you. When you pray, you make a difference. Your prayers are heard, they are felt, and they can change the lives of those you are praying for. God answers prayers and when we pray for others we are also blessed. We become a participant in what God is doing, we get the blessing of seeing the miracles, of being aware of God working.