Hope When Your Heart Hurts - The Crosswalk Devotional - October 14
Hope When Your Heart Hurts
By Hannah Benson
Bible Reading:
“The Lord is near to the brokenhearted
and saves the crushed in spirit.” - Psalm 34:18 (ESV)
Tears filled my eyes.
Why did it have to hurt so much?
I was 15 years old, a tender homeschooled high school sophomore, and for the first time in my life, I’d thought I’d found my very own kindred spirit. We’d not known each other long, but already, it felt as if we’d known each other forever. Perhaps we’d be forever friends, like Anne of Green Gables and her kindred spirit, Diana, or Katie Weldon and Christy Miller (from Robin Jones Gunn’s bestselling Christy Miller series).
But it didn’t turn out that way, and looking back, I recognize that I clung to this friendship with an iron fist until it became more important to me than God.
An idol.
We know from Scripture that God, rightly so, will not permit idols in our lives (Exodus 20:3, 4; 1 Corinthians 10:14; 1 Samuel 5:2-4). Anything that we hold tighter than God becomes an idol, which He will either remove or put into its proper place in our lives.
The removal of something, something that might even be good, and surrendering to God’s will, hurts sometimes.
When God allowed that friend to walk away from my life, it hurt so terribly.
I shed countless tears.
But even as I wept, in the deepest parts of my soul, something was happening.
I didn’t know it at the time, but I realize now that the Lord was peeling back a layer of myself, exposing me to His grace.
And as the years passed and more relationships shifted and my heart broke a little more, God gently peeled back another layer as one removes a band-aid, asking me to be more vulnerable with Him and to lean on Him.
I didn’t realize until later that the Lord wanted all of me. I’d been so afraid to surrender my will that I clung to my life and the things I thought I could control with an iron fist.
But little by little, God called me to let go and trust Him.
As the years passed, I became increasingly aware of the fact that I wasn’t in charge, and at the age of 19, I’d lost even the illusion of control when my mom was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.
I remember sitting on the wooden floor in our family room, my family clustered around Mom after her visit to the doctor. The moment she told us she had bad news, tears filled my eyes.
Because I knew.
It was as if a dark shadow descended over our home, striking fear into our hearts. We all know life can be fragile, but when we’re slapped in the face with something as terrible as cancer, we begin to realize for the first time how fragile it is.
The next day, I journaled my thoughts in a prayer to the Lord. “It is an odd thing, truly, to be surrounded by such peace in the midst of such awful news.” It didn’t make sense to me or even to my mom, who also had peace and a growing trust in God. Yet during that season, our entire family felt the nearness of God in a way we never had before.
But it took God removing us from our comfort zone and giving us an opportunity to trust Him.
It took surrendering and laying down everything to the Lord. Countless tears and begging God for a miracle, but fully realizing His plans might not be ours. God reminded me, as I remembered the friendship I’d lost years earlier and wondered if I would lose my mom, that even though it felt like He was breaking me, He was only in the process of making me who He wanted me to be.
Are you being pulled from your comfort zone? Maybe you have children leaving home, elderly parents that need to be cared for, or an unknown future facing you. I believe that God will take us from where we’re comfortable to where we’ll trust Him, even if it means stripping our illusion of control.
Intersecting Faith & Life:
Friends, the breaking is part of the making.
God’s ways are higher than ours, and His thoughts are higher than our thoughts (Isaiah 55:9). When my mom was diagnosed with cancer, I didn’t know how that could be true. But the truth of Scripture isn’t based on our feelings but on God. It led me to answer hard questions I’d never wanted to ask: What if God did allow me to lose my mom? (For those of you wondering, she was declared cancer-free in July 2023. Praise Jesus!)
However, amid not knowing, God challenged me to make the decision to praise and worship Him no matter what happened and to give thanks in all circumstances (1 Thessalonians 5:18).
Even when the future remained unclear, God reminded me that one thing never changes: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8 ESV). The same is true no matter what you’re going through today. Jesus remains the same and will give you hope even when your heart hurts.
Photo Credit: Kelly Sikhema
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Related Resource: 9 Confusing Things about God– Answered By a Christian Philosopher
How can God be all-present (omnipresent) and yet be located in the temple and indwell believers? How can God know everything (omniscient) if He doesn't know what it is like to sin? How can God be a necessary Being if it is logically possible He doesn't exist? These are just a few of the tough, philosophical questions Sean McDowell discusses with William Lane Craig.
