Finding God in the middle of tough times

Sometimes life serves up gut-wrenchingly awful things.

Someone gets critically hurt. Or dies. A messy divorce happens. A new job doesn't pan out. Or you wind up waiting years for a job in your field while working at something that barely puts food on the table.

When these things happen, there is a propensity among followers of God's Son to pull out a scripture that points to the light at the end of the tunnel. 

"Keep going!" "Chin up!" "Don't despair!" "God is for you!"

Yes, it's good to keep going.

Yes, it's probably also a good idea to keep your chin up.

Ditto regarding trying not to despair and remembering that God is for us.

But I don't think that God expects us to deny our feelings. God gave us the ability to feel things for a reason.

A spouse dying should cause deep pain and immense sorrow.

Losing a child to a disease is irrevocably horrible.

Yes, it's important to remain focused on God during these times.

But it's also important to give space and time to feel the hurt behind every tragedy.

Crying because you are experiencing sorrow doesn't make you a second-rate follower of God's Son.

Letting tears of grief freely flow is cleansing and actually part of the healing process.

I have also come to believe that part of that healing process is recognizing that some things are so painful that they leave what I call lifescars.

That is, you never totally get over these awful events in this life. They leave a scar after the healing process. But getting hit in the gut by life doesn't preclude the ability to maintain trust and hope in God.

God wants us to experience loss while we going through it. God does use trials and challenges to build our character. But not at the expense of becoming emotionally distant and cold.

In fact, if we find ourselves in that position, we should consider it a golden opportunity to go to God for emotional help.

There are lots of scriptures that point to how God uses tribulations. In fact, some scriptures even promise that we will experience such things. Those scriptures are there to remind us that God is with us, no matter what. But the Bible doesn't contain any scripture that calls on us to deny feeling pain or sorrow.

Take Job for instance. He went through incredible trails (losing all his wealth, children and health). Through it all Job remained steadfast. But he also went to God with his anguish.

It's actually encouraging to realize that whatever we are going through, just like Job, we are totally free to go to God with it. 

God never discourages direct communication. God is all for it.  God doesn't mind seeing your lifescars one bit. 

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