The Blessing in Your Suffering: Finding the Silver Lining When There is No Silver Lining

God, don’t you care about me?!

Anxiety had wrecked my body, mind, and spirit, day after day, for years. I cried out to God many times to deliver me. But my faith was shallow. I had no deep roots. And, through anxiety, God was going to do some work on me – for my benefit, but also, for the benefit of others.

Life was simple before anxiety. I didn’t dwell on other people's problems. I was a blissful newlywed. I had my dream husband in a home of our own… life was good. And then, I began to have anxiety that, at times, was debilitating.

God lovingly sustained me through the years until He led me to a blessed counselor in 2020 and later a functional medicine chiropractor. While the anxiety hasn’t disappeared, I am thankful that I have the tools I need to overcome the spirit of fear and worry.

As I look back, I can see that God was growing me. Growing my faith, yes, but also my capacity to sympathize and empathize with others. I care more deeply about other people’s struggles simply because I know how difficult it is to struggle through something overwhelming.

I can’t relate to every problem, but I can relate to the struggle.

This is the blessing in the suffering.

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.” 2 Corinthians 1:3-4

God comforts us in our troubles so that we can comfort others!

God is so good… Jesus tells us to expect trouble in this fallen world, but our good God will not waste our suffering. There is beauty in it. Not only does suffering draw us nearer to our Heavenly Father, and not only does the God of the universe take notice of our hurt and wrap His arms around us and tend to our weary souls, but He also increases our spiritual capacity to comfort others. We become more capable of offering genuine and meaningful comfort to someone who is hurting, “comfort we ourselves have received from God.”

Friend, you and I will pass through trials. But God uses those trials to grow our faith in Him and reveal when we are relying on our own strength instead of His. Ultimately, trials help us become outwardly oriented rather than inwardly-focused as we grow in spiritual maturity. So the next time you face something difficult – an illness, financial hardship, or the unthinkable tragedies of life where we lose those we love – please, remember that God will not waste your suffering.

Perhaps this is one of the reasons why Paul tells us to rejoice in our sufferings.

“Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”
Romans 5: 3-5

God pours into us. We pour into others. Rejoice, friend, for one day, you will be able to pour out God’s very own love and comfort into a thirsty soul.