"All things work together for good," they said...

"God has a plan," they said. 
"Everything happens for a reason," they said.

But what about when the evidence appears to prove the opposite? What about those nights when the fear creeps up the back of your throat, choking out your breath like bile?

What about those days when your heart aches, and your stomach won't release the knots, and your fingers fumble even the most familiar tasks?

What about those times when you sequester yourself in the shower, while the tears stream down your cheeks in waterfalls, and the sobs shake your body in convulsions... because that's the only place your children won't see you cry?

What about those dawns when dreams claw at the edges of your consciousness... and in that trembling twilight between wakefulness and slumber, you know in your soul that your lack of peace comes from awakening to the fact that the monsters in your world are real?

Because your worst nightmares aren't figments of childish imagination in the shadows under your bed. Because you are bereft and battered and bleeding from battles against the kind of darkness that still lies in wait after sunrise...

What about those moments when you need answers but have none, and so to avoid burdening the sweet trusting faces who depend on you for security... you wear a smile even when your eyes are brimming with tears

What about the seasons of life when you need to pray, when you want to pray... but there are simply no words to be found? 

Or maybe there are words, but they keep roiling around in your head with such frenzy that you cannot sensibly string them together much less frame them into sentences and force them out of your mouth.

How do you pray then?
What do you say then?
Where do you turn now?

When You Need to Pray Most

It's easy to conclude that because you are struggling to pray, it must mean God isn't listening. That your struggle somehow proves that He's absent, arrogant, aloof...

It's natural to feel abandoned when there's no sign to indicate that your suffering might ease any time soon. And yet, it is in these seasons we find the greatest comfort in God, if we will.

It is when you feel numb, wordless, muted by the twin punches of trauma and circumstance -- that you need to pray the most. 

It is when you cannot form words that God quietly connects with your spirit.

One survivor friend of mine described this season as "a one-way street, where God is doing all the work, because I simply can't."

But the beautiful thing is that, when we find ourselves flattened by fear and immobilized by grief, by abuse, by suffering in whatever form it has found us... God can and will step in and do the heavy lifting...

...only if you give Him permission.

In the quagmire of personal anguish, we often forget three crucial things:

• divine silence does not equal divine absence,

• suffering does not originate from the heart of God,

• the forces of evil are battling viciously to win.

These crucial messages are often overwhelmed by the subconscious lies we believe about prayer, about God, about love. We tell ourselves (or have been taught) the myths that talking to God works best when we sound good, when are do good, when we are good.

God does not need our fancy words. 
He does not demand coherence or compliance. 
He does not even insist upon conversation.

In fact, He's quite allergic to pretentious human attempts at self-aggrandizement. He says so Himself:

Shout aloud! Don’t be timid.
Tell my people Israel of their sins!
Yet they act so pious!
They come to the Temple every day
    and seem delighted to learn all about me.
They act like a righteous nation
    that would never abandon the laws of its God.
They ask me to take action on their behalf,
    pretending they want to be near me.
3‘We have fasted before you!’ they say.
    ‘Why aren’t you impressed?
We have been very hard on ourselves,
    and you don’t even notice it!’
Isaiah 58:1-3, NLT

In other words, God isn't asking you to fake it. He isn't impressed when you try to act like you have it all together. Sanctimonious pretense makes Him nauseated.

You Can't Out-Feel God

Another common myth teaches us that it's not okay to get mad at God. As if somehow the Creator of the universe cannot handle the spectrum of human emotion which He Himself created. As though we somehow achieve greater holiness if we never ask questions and never seek answers.

But tell me, who really makes it through a deep and authentic life without that? Nobody. Certainly not the biblical prophets or the apostles or the reformation fathers.

Have you read the book of Job lately? 
Or Psalm 58? 
Or Psalm 73? 

These are not the pompous outpourings of a self-righteous heart. 
They're not the platitudes of a soul without trials. 

These are the turbulent tirades of those who were pillars of faith, and yet unafraid to pound their fists in God's direction and wrestle through the pain, suffering, and spiritual warfare.

David, Job, Isaiah, Paul, and so many others -- they didn't flee big feelings.
Raw emotions.
Honest wrestling. 

They were unafraid to sit with God and simmer in their anger and their agony. What's more, they knew that even when they could not speak, God got the message anyway. That's what the Holy Spirit is for...

26 And the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness.
For example, we don’t know what God wants us to pray for.
But the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings
that cannot be expressed in words.
27 And the Father who knows all hearts
knows what the Spirit is saying,
for the Spirit pleads for us believers
in harmony with God’s own will.
Romans 8:26-27, NLT

You don't need to be perfect.
You don't need to have pretty words.
All you need is a willingness to be still.

To keep coming back to the presence of God long enough for the ice and the numbness to thaw.
To let Him interpret the groaning in your heart that rumbles too deep down to form conscious thought.

To give Him permission to carry those heavy feelings and speak truth back into your shattered soul and comfort you while you gradually find the words again.

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To let yourself fall apart in His hands, knowing that He is big enough and strong enough to hold you, to heal you, to handle it.

And that's perfectly okay.

What Carries Me Through

In my wordless seasons, I've found that listening to music and scripture are healing ways to let my heart pray without speaking. Sometimes, my rawest prayers pour out after hearing the words of someone else.

When you can't find the words, it's okay to sit in silence. 
It's also okay to fill the space with someone else's words if that helps.

One very painful year, I spent months with the tender albums from Scripture Lullabies on constant repeat. The gentle music of Michael Card's lullabies were a favorite too. (See CDs at the end of the blog.)

I journaled daily.

Sometimes in a handwritten prayer journal (these are my favorite). Sometimes in an app on my phone. Wherever it happened to be most convenient to record my thoughts. 

Somehow writing often comes easier than speaking, or sometimes even thinking, as odd as that may sound. 

Every morning I'd copy down whichever verse(s) stood out to me, shifting them into first person, staring at them in my own handwriting, reading them over and over to myself until the words swam on the page.

When I was unable to sleep, I decided to fill my mind with God's truth about me instead of the lies I'd been conditioned to believe over the years. I discovered that it was healing to record my favorite passages on my phone and listen to God's word in my own voice. It felt like the closest I could get to being inside my own head. 

As a result I created a playlist of Meditations and Truth Statements.

These gentle passages of scripture are set to soothing music, each one just long enough to help you drift off to sleep. (Spanish playlist is here.)

If you’re wondering which season of healing you’re in right now, grab the Seasons of Healing workshop today!

Do You Know...

• Which season of healing you’re in right now?

• What your mind & body need most in this season?

• How to recognize patterns of harm?

"Seasons of Healing" Launches You on the Path to:

• reclaim your voice from the silence.

• pierce the fog of cognitive dissonance.

• live in radical commitment to truth.

• take back control of your choices.

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