O MY! SO MUCH PAIN! BUT GOD!

Acts 13:30 (ESV) But God raised him from the dead…

A Quick Disclaimer: I’ve always promised to be honest with you all, and that includes being honest about my limitations. Lately, the fatigue from my battle with cancer has made it hard for my mind to focus as well as it used to. To help me get these thoughts out of my head and onto the page, I used Google AI to assist with the writing and flow of this blog. It’s a help I’m grateful for as I continue to share my heart with you.

This year has given me an overwhelming sense of powerlessness. Since January, my loved ones and I have been drowning in endless pain and exhaustion from our health issues. Living together under one roof, we are all fighting our own battles with cancer: my dad has bladder cancer, while my mom and I are both facing terminal lung cancer.

Yet, in the midst of this heavy season, God gave us a beautiful milestone when my mom was discharged from hospice care in April. She entered the program over a year ago following her terminal prognosis, but she defied the odds and has remained stable. Though we are still navigating her increased episodes of pain and a steady decline in her physical strength, I thank God for answering this prayer.

Living with our collective health declines has shifted my thoughts about hardships, finding myself thinking more deeply about “suffering” when I hear the word “pain”. While they are technically different, both terms trigger copious amounts of anxiety in my heart, particularly when the divine purpose behind our situations remains hidden. Of course, avoiding pain is a natural human instinct meant to keep us safe. Yet, I am learning that trying to run from it at all costs can actually paralyze us and steal our joy for living.

As I look back at how I have spiritually responded to these challenges over the last few months, I discover that my perception of suffering directly impacts how much agony I experience. Though these struggles are undeniably real, the true torment has been amplified by my own mind—through fear, a depressive outlook, and a tendency toward catastrophic thinking. Recognizing how my mind has been magnifying this suffering is my first step toward finding and surrendering to God’s beautifully perfect peace, even when I am entirely uncertain as to “why” these difficulties are part of His plan.

With my overwhelmed way of viewing challenging situations, imagine my initial reaction as I listened to a sermon titled, “Why God Allows Pain, Suffering, and Evil to Exist and How God Deals with Them.” For several months, I had wrestled long and hard with God over some of what the preacher, Jimmy Black, had said in his message. Yet, I believe that navigating this spiritual tension is drawing me closer to God as I continue to uncover His purpose for my journey.

Our local church has been studying the four Gospels, piecing together what we call the “Jesus Mosaic”—a visual representation of Christ’s diverse character traits as uncovered through Scripture. That specific Sunday, Jimmy preached from Mark 5 about the man possessed by a legion of demons. Historically, I had never struggled with the theological question of why God permits depravity to exist. I understood that human free will allows self-serving choices to evolve into terrible abuses, yet I firmly believe that God uses those man-made horrors to refine our character and give our lives deeper meaning. I had witnessed how immense spiritual growth can bloom when we allow God into our hardships, knowing that He is never simply cruel.

I never questioned that outlook until I contemplated two concepts from Jimmy’s sermon that challenged me to examine the question much deeper. Because of my typical reaction to pain and suffering, his words began to paint an image of God that deeply disturbed me. The first revelation was that truly loving someone means actively inviting pain into your heart. Love is essentially a two-way street; for it to be complete, it must not only be expressed, but it must also possess the freedom to be reciprocated. Because the possibility of rejection always exists, opening oneself up to love inevitably opens the door to the probability of pain.

His second revelation hit closer to home: on this side of heaven, pain is an absolute constant that never truly fades. We are either actively causing it, or we are enduring it. When we attempt to run from our trials by choosing a selfish path, we directly cause God pain, just as we hurt others and ultimately ourselves. Conversely, when we choose to love and obey God, the act of denying our flesh is immediate, deeply challenging, and painful in its own right.

So, whoa—what? Allow me to explain one of my main cognitive distortions, known as catastrophizing. With this distortion, everything starts with a small, irrational thought and the intense feelings behind it. Because that initial idea isn't properly processed or challenged, I end up believing and reacting to an inaccurate narrative. I continually obsess over it, inevitably focusing on the worst possible scenario. In layman’s terms: I constantly make mountains out of molehills, magnifying my own suffering. Sometimes these internal mountains become so massive and overwhelming that it feels nearly impossible to tear them down and find my calm.

In my previous blogs, I shared that I had decided to finally admit my feelings, regardless of the discomfort it caused. Denying them was just lying to myself and to God. I discovered that trying to suppress my emotions only intensified them, causing far more damage in the long run. Eventually, I realized that I had spent years denying how I felt simply because I associated those feelings with pain. Like an addict chasing a fix, I would constantly repeat the same avoidant behaviors, desperately seeking relief. For a long time, that survival loop was all I knew.

Lately, as I have been dealing with added health issues, expressing these unpleasant feelings before God on a daily basis has become a massive challenge. Our biological default is to avoid pain at all costs. So, given my history of denying my feelings to escape suffering, the cognitive distortion triggered a chaotic spiral of questions: “Wait a minute. What? There is no way of avoiding pain at all? Because I choose to love, I am actively inviting pain in? Is pain completely inevitable?” I felt completely floored, and my mind started screaming out in frustration: “Where are you, God, in all of this? Why did you make your creation this way?”

For the next few days, I kept wrestling with God, desperately trying to understand why. In my despair, I felt like Job, ready to curse the day I was born. My heart was completely broken because my focus had narrowed entirely to our pain and suffering. My mind kept crying out: “LORD, why is love like this? Why all this pain?”

The following Wednesday evening, the spiritual tension within me became completely overwhelming. Our church hosted a lesson on prayer, and one of our teachers, Tim Reese, shared a scripture that challenged my perspective on suffering even further. Reading 1 Thessalonians 4:3, which states that God’s will is our sanctification and holiness, Tim noted that if the answer to a prayer is "no," it is because granting it would not make us holy. For instance, missing out on a desired job promotion simply means God knows that specific promotion will not work toward our holiness.

Under normal circumstances, that would be an encouraging truth, but because of my mindset at the time, it made me freak out all the more. As I was sharing my conclusion of the study with a friend of mine that evening, all I could focus on was: “How could it be God’s will for there to always be pain? How does all that pain sanctify us?” If any of our choices will always cause some type of pain for someone somewhere, then it feels inescapable. My heart cried out: “LORD, you know I really hate experiencing any type of anguish whether it is towards me or even with the guilt that I feel when others suffer on the count of me. Father God, what am I to do?”

That night, these thoughts were too much for me to handle. I felt like I cried a river because I hated the idea of pain and suffering so much. I noticed all I could do was pour out my heart to God, telling Him exactly how I felt and pleading with Him to sort it all out for me. I prayed: “LORD, I cannot wrap my mind around my issues with pain and suffering. You know my heart and my limitations. Tell me what You want me to do.” I eventually fell asleep in tears with a deep sense of sorrow and hopelessness.

The next morning, God heard my cry. I woke up with encouraging thoughts in my head, and I just knew it was Him communicating to me. The message was clear: “Yes, all this pain is a problem, and I understand you are having a big issue with it right now, BUT I am the solution. Remember what you learned in Mind Change: An Overcomer’s Handbook by Thomas Jones: The problem, BUT GOD.”

It was the Holy Spirit moving in my heart, reminding me how to view my life through the truth of that book. I realized God is in control and knows everything; He always does what is best for me. I felt called to totally trust that He is always there, working within me to process these painful situations and to learn from them.

Of course, as I was trying to process this a bit further, my sinful nature began feeding off of my overly negative focus on my failures, discouragement, and guilt. The Holy Spirit had to remind me of two facts. First, when Jesus went to the cross, He took on every single one of my sins so that I could be forgiven of each of them. The second fact was that just as the gospel story did not end with Jesus dying on the cross, I did not stay buried in the waters of baptism. God raised Jesus from the dead, just as He raised me to have a new life. This new life gives me the forgiveness of my sin and His gift of the Holy Spirit. As Jesus is at the right hand of God interceding on my behalf, His Spirit is within me, guiding and directing me to love God and obey Jesus’ teachings.

Yet, this new life is still lived in a broken world where free will always brings pain to someone, somewhere. Focusing on God as the solution does not mean ignoring the problems or what I feel about these issues. As Tim said, God’s will is to make me holy, so I must continually bring Him my thoughts and feelings honestly. Though I will never fully understand all of His plans—the how or even the why He brings about my transformation—I trust that He always knows and does what is best for me. He provides what I need as He helps me process my emotions and my thoughts. I trust He will deliver me and teach me all He desires through the challenges I endure. 

Like Jacob wrestling with God in Genesis 32, I no longer want to run from my past. I want to hold onto God and endure whatever spiritual, emotional, or physical pain is necessary to find lasting peace with Him. I want to be transformed from being self-reliant and manipulative into a woman fully dependent upon God’s faithfulness.

Jimmy ended his sermon beautifully by answering his final question: How does God deal with pain, suffering, and evil? He explained that God and Jesus, who are fully loving and good, chose to enter into that pain themselves as a promise that we too can be transformed and dwell in God’s presence forever. Jesus came to earth naked and stripped of His deity, born as a dependent baby. He grew up in this broken world to eventually be betrayed, ridiculed, and cursed upon a tree. He was placed in a tomb, unclean with death and decay, in order to defeat sin, hell, death, and the grave. He did not ignore or run from this suffering, but willingly became God’s instrument, taking on both the pain and our responsibility. Jesus chose to die for us as He said to the Father, “Thy will be done.” And in the end, “It is finished.”

And this is who I choose to follow. To God be all the glory forever. Amen.