\u201cDo you cut yourself?\u201d<\/i> I ask. \u201cNo<\/i>,\u201d she whispers. \u201cI burn myself.\u201d<\/i> She pulls up her sleeves to show me dark red lines all the way up her arms. \u201cI use a curling iron.\u201d\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n
\u201cI took the whole bottle of pills,\u201d<\/i> he says. \u201cMy wife found me passed out and called 911.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n
\u201cI want out,\u201d<\/i> she says. \u201cI can\u2019t promise you I won\u2019t follow through. Life is too dark for me.\u201d\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n
I work in a mental health practice, and hear these stories over and over. People who often look normal on the outside give a glimpse into their painful inner worlds. The darkness is deep and the stories sad: abuse, trauma, anxiety, depression, addiction, substance abuse, brokenness, and pain.<\/p>\n
I\u2019d like to think these stories are anomalies, but they aren\u2019t. Every 16 minutes someone in the United States commits suicide. It\u2019s the tenth leading cause of death in Americans over age 10. At least one in four American adults suffers from a diagnosable mental illness such as depression or anxiety in any given year.<\/p>\n
The voices of my patients join the much louder collective cry of human suffering that Jesus hears each day. \u201cThe pain is too much. There\u2019s no reason to hope. Life is too dark for me.\u201d\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n It\u2019s better to go to a funeral than a party?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n All of us experience darkness. Whether or not we’re depressed, we’re all victims of our world\u2019s war between good and evil, a reality that inevitably includes pain. Sooner or later darkness will catch up with each of us. It could be the darkness of failure, rejection, loss, addiction, unmet needs, or disappointed hopes.<\/p>\n What do we do with the darkness?<\/p>\n Option One:<\/b>\u00a0Numb the pain. The possibilities are endless: substances, overwork, entertainment, avoidance, and countless other methods of self-medicating. The problem is, the pain will come back to haunt you, the darkness blacker than before.<\/p>\n Option Two<\/b>: Try to suppress or outsmart the pain. Just think your way out of it. \u201cI know I\u2019m not supposed to feel this way. It\u2019s not really that bad. I just need to suck it up!\u201d <\/i>Reframing your thoughts can be helpful, especially if you\u2019re reframing them towards Jesus, but option two is impossible (and discouraging) if you don\u2019t have option three first.<\/p>\n Option Three:<\/b> Bring your pain to Jesus. Jesus won\u2019t tell you to suck it up, because He knows what it\u2019s like to feel pain. Reflecting on Gethsemane, Ellen White wrote: \u201cThe human heart longs for sympathy in suffering. This longing Christ felt to the very depths of His being\u201d (<\/i>The Desire of Ages, p. 687)<\/i>.<\/p>\n The same Jesus who craved comfort in His suffering reaches out to comfort you in yours. He isn\u2019t scared of your sorrow. In fact, He\u2019s given your pain a purpose.<\/p>\n King Solomon wrote:<\/p>\n \u201cIt is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting, for death is the destiny of everyone; the living should take this to heart\u201d (Ecclesiastes 7:2, NIV).<\/p>\n Say what?<\/p>\n It\u2019s better to go to a funeral than a party?<\/p>\n I didn\u2019t say it. Solomon did. But it does makes sense to me. Something about darkness and death make the reality of the gospel come to life. I held my Grandpa\u2019s hand while he died. I listened and watched as his breathing slowed and finally stopped. In that moment, I knew that Jesus would give him another breath soon. I realized that Jesus bought the right to do that when His own breathing stopped. It was a beautiful thought. It made Jesus seem more real, and my appreciation for Him stronger.<\/p>\n I\u2019m learning that pain makes me value Jesus more.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n My own story has included seasons in which life seemed too dark for me. I hate these times, but in hindsight, I\u2019m grateful for them. Why? Because I\u2019m slowly discovering the blessing of option three. I\u2019m learning that pain makes me value Jesus more.<\/p>\n Sometimes we\u2019re too quick to slap a diagnosis on sadness. I don\u2019t think Jesus wants us to be sad, but when those seasons come, He can use them in a profound way. In The Problem of Pain<\/i>, C.S. Lewis puts it this way:<\/p>\n \u201cEvery man knows that something is wrong when he is being hurt…\u00a0 Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.\u201d<\/p>\n Of course, God is not the source of the bad things that hurt us, but He is big enough, wise enough, and loving enough to \u201crob\u201d evil of its power to destroy us. Instead, He \u201chijacks\u201d it for our beautification. If you\u2019re struggling with sadness or pain, maybe Jesus is whispering or shouting behind the madness\u2014not by causing the pain, but by speaking through it. The Man of Sorrow wants you to bring your sorrows to Him. In His wounds, you\u2019ll find healing for yours.<\/p>\n The Man of Sorrow wants you to bring your sorrows to Him.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I wouldn\u2019t wish sadness on anyone. But I think the feeling that the world is too dark for us is actually a really good thing, especially when we think about it like this:<\/p>\n “This world is too dark for me. Jesus said He would go away and prepare mansions for us, that where He is we may be also. Praise God for this. My heart leaps with joy at the cheering prospect\u201d\u00a0(Ellen White, Manuscript Releases<\/i>, vol. 10, p. 21).<\/p>\n Jesus, help me endure as much darkness as it takes to realize this world is not my home. Teach me to bring my pain to You. Thank You for being\u00a0the Light of the world, the Father of compassion, and the God of all comfort.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cDo you cut yourself?\u201d I ask. \u201cNo,\u201d she whispers. \u201cI burn myself.\u201d She pulls up her sleeves to show me dark red…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11347,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[93],"class_list":["post-9584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-devotional","tag-pain"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/Too_Dark_for_Me.jpg?fit=2560%2C1440&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paAh8r-2uA","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9584"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9584\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11350,"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9584\/revisions\/11350"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lightbearers.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}