Story time.  I want to have a chat with you about why I’ve been so M.I.A. around here the past two months and what I’ve been dealing with as I’ve walked through one of the hardest seasons of transition in my life. I want to share what God has been teaching me because I believe it will help you walk through pain and hard transitions too.

When God’s Provision Leads To Chaos

You may know that I’ve worked in college ministry for the past three years or so. The super short summary of the story is that in December, right when I was about to reluctantly step out of full-time ministry because of financial challenges, I was offered an opportunity to serve my spiritual community through stage management and helping run our weekend services –something I enjoy and have previous experience doing. It would make a difference for me financially, allowing me to stay in full-time ministry, and even to stay involved in college ministry, though at a lesser capacity.

My leaders even found me a free car (thanks to an amazing family in our community) so that I would have the freedom to fulfill all the responsibilities of my new role! I’ve been without a car for the four years I’ve lived in Kansas City because of financial struggles, and being a born and raised New Yorker, I’ve never had a car of my own before. It’s a huge deal!

I started my new role in January, and one of the craziest God stories and blessings of my life also launched me into one of the most emotionally painful transitions of my life. Transition and me–yeah, we don’t get along so well.

Transition is tricky enough for me because I have a deep fear of being inadequate and a need for security, so having to adjust to new situations and new tasks is never initially an enjoyable or easy experience for me. Working through learning a new job and learning how to be a driver and a car owner (something this NYC girl doesn’t have a ton of experience with, even as an adult) presented its own set of challenges to me.

But it’s what was beneath it all that really made the transition so hard. Something that God helped me to recognize as a pattern and to put language to for the first time in my life: I have a severe fear of losing valued friends and of being abandoned by people that I love.

1. God Understands Our Weaknesses

This High Priest of ours understands our weaknesses, for He faced all of the same testings we do, yet He did not sin. So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive His mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it most. (Hebrews 4:15-16)

Every time some type of major life change happens for me or for close friends of mine, I’m immediately triggered into “what does this mean for our friendship?” and I’m overwhelmed with grief because I’m afraid this change could lead to the end of a friendship that I care about so much. Whether it’s moving to a new location, or a new job or opportunity that changes our schedule and the demands of life etc., I struggle. Every time.

Even if nothing has actually changed between us relationally. Even if the friend and I are still on great terms and are very much present in each other’s lives, as has been the case in this season and several before it. Just the simple fact that something changed in our external circumstances sends me into a spiral of “what ifs” and “worst case scenarios” about how our friendship will be impacted, and the pain I feel because of that is almost unbearable, whether rational or not.

Throughout all this, Jesus has been revealing Himself to me as the one who understands our weaknesses. He’s been showing me that He not only understands our weakness as it pertains to temptation and sin because He faced temptation and overcame it without sinning. He also understands all types of our human struggles and weaknesses because He lived our human experience and went through same testing and trials that we do. (Hebrews 2:18)

So I started praying that since Jesus understands my weakness that He would help me understand it too. That He would get to the root of the emotions I feel and help me understand why I’m feeling what I’m feeling, why this is such a consistent pattern in my life and how to work through it. Hebrews 4:15-16 teaches us that Jesus not only understands our weaknesses but that when we come boldly before Him with those weaknesses, we experience His mercy (kindness/compassion) and He gives us grace, or empowerment, to help us in those areas of weakness too.

We all have patterns and cycles in our lives. We all have challenges, areas of pain, and things that trigger us in life and sometimes we don’t know why. I would encourage you to bring your emotions honestly to God no matter how awkward it may feel to say them out loud. Ask God the same kinds of questions about the areas of pain or challenge in your life, big or small, and pray that He would give you understanding and help to move forward. He loves to hear your heart and He loves to help His kids.

2. Finding the Roots of Feelings

God’s been showing me that when circumstances are challenging or painful, sometimes there’s not only one reason why that’s the case. That’s definitely been true in my situation. As I give examples of what those factors were and how they played out in my story, see if you can relate to any of them and what you might be facing right now.

Normal circumstances: Because of the amazing work God has done in knitting our staff together as a spiritual family, my work life in college ministry is very intertwined with my community life and my friendships. We do everything together, from daily life to ministry. My friends really are my family. For me to step into a new job and a new schedule stirred this fear that I would also be uprooted from my closest friendships. That’s not true, but it’s a totally reasonable growing pain to wrestle with in a scenario like this.

Past experiences: Because of painful seasons in my life of loneliness and longing for deep, godly friendships, when God does place those types of friendships in my life that I’ve prayed for, I’m terrified of losing them. I value the people He’s placed in my life so much that I’m afraid of them not being there anymore and I’m afraid of being lonely and disappointed again.

Lies: Because of rejection I experienced in pursuing friendship growing up, I have lies that I believe about myself and the way people see me. I believe that I’m the reject, that I’m unloved and unwanted, that I’m disposable to people when they find something more interesting to focus on. In my mind, any type of change in life is not just a cool new season for me or for one of my friends to celebrate, it’s also a potential opportunity for someone I love to get distracted, throw me away and decide they don’t care about me anymore. But that’s not true about my identity, or the character of the friends God has given me, or how they feel about me.

Spiritual Battle: One of the main things we learn from the story of Jesus being tempted in the wilderness is that the devil likes to tempt us and attack us at our weak points. (Matthew 4:1-11) I know for sure much of what I’ve been dealing with was spiritual attack because of how crippling the emotions were and how irrational my emotions and thoughts got at times. What I was dealing with was heightened by the enemy trying to take advantage of my weak points and use it against me and against my relationships.

Personality: On a positive note, I also learned that the reason the idea of potentially losing friends is so hard for me is because God wired me in such a way that when I finally open my heart to people, I love deeply and trust fully. I value relationships with people highly and I’m very loyal. Those are all strengths, but they are strengths that come with challenges because if I ever can’t see friends as much anymore, or someone moves, or a friendship is lost, it’s always going to be especially hard for me to get through because I care so much and feel so strongly.

I’m afraid of the pain I’ll feel if people I love aren’t in my life in the same way anymore. I’m afraid of the pain I’ll feel from missing them. I’m afraid of finding out that someone I love and care about so much could potentially move on without me and without our friendship and it not be as emotionally difficult for them as it is for me. I need God to teach me how to manage those emotions, how to filter truth from lies, and how to trust Him to comfort me when I need it.

3. It’s Okay To Get Help

All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is our merciful Father and the source of all comfort. He comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others. When they are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us. (2 Corinthians 1:3-4)

I reached a point where the pain I was in was ruining my ability to function day-to-day. I woke up sad every morning and was sad all day, every day. I had no motivation to face the day or to do things that I enjoy. I had frequent crying fits that I could barely control. I was in so much pain emotionally that I could physically feel tension in my chest. Getting through every day was hard work from start to finish.

Thanks to some prodding from some trusted friends I had confided in, I considered counseling for the first time in my life. If you’ve talked to me over the last year you would know how excited I’ve been that the Church is starting to realize the value of counseling and starting to talk about how we should view mental and emotional health as Christians, and I’ve encouraged it. But when it came to me having to be the one to take that step it was so scary.

It scared me because letting someone else in to what I was dealing with meant that I not only had to face my own emotions and do the hard work to work through them, but I also had to be vulnerable with others and expose my weakness to them. There was fear of judgment, fear of being misunderstood, fear of what steps they’d tell me I’d have to take to overcome this.

Maybe the same things scare you. But you know what? I’m so glad I did it. Much of the of clarity I just shared with you and much of the relief I’ve experienced from the spiritual battle element of all this happened because I talked with a friend’s parents and let them speak into my situation and pray for me.

Depending on what’s right for your situation, letting people in and getting help may look like sharing with a trusted friend, or speaking with a pastor or counselor or a combination of those things. It may be one conversation; it may be longer term. But I encourage you to let trusted people into what you’re facing. And if you’re scared, let them in anyway because you won’t be dealing with it alone anymore and there’s progress on the other side of it if you’ll engage the process.

So much of God’s healing and comfort comes to us through the people He places in our lives.

4. Healing Takes Time

 He heals the brokenhearted and bandages their wounds. (Psalm 147:3)

Through this whole season, I’ve been trying to rush the process of healing. I just wanted my emotions fixed as quickly as possible. All I knew was I was in pain, and the pain I was feeling indirectly affected friends that I care deeply about and made me believe things about how they felt about me that I knew were not true and tempted me to shut myself off from them as a protection mechanism, and I didn’t like it. I just wanted to fix it and not be in pain anymore.

Alessia Cara has a song on her latest album, The Pains of Growing, called “Easier Said” that I’ve been clinging to in this season. It’s about how, when we’re going through hard things, sometimes we feel like we have to rush ourselves to heal and recover or others may try to put that pressure on us. The lyric I love so much in the song is, “healing and patience are lovers.”

It’s not good for us to wallow in painful emotions and situations without seeking God for help, but it’s also not good for us to expect difficult and complex things to heal and resolve with the snap of a finger. The trick is learning the balance. Letting yourself feel your feelings and being honest with God and others about them, while at the same time clinging to and declaring the truth of His Word over your emotions and circumstances. (Read my post God Can Handle Your Angry Prayers if you want to know more about that)

All of this is still very raw and in process for me. I’ve taken major steps, but I still have questions. I still get triggered, but at least I can identify why and ask God to help me agree with truth. My emotions have a lot of catching up to do, though, believe me. I still cry pretty often. I did today.

I still miss things about what my role in college ministry looked like before it had to share space with another ministry role in my life. I still miss not being able to share certain small moments that had become normal with my friends in the same way, like planning meetings together, or carpooling, or being involved in every single aspect of every campus ministry event we do.

It’s gonna take me a while to get used to that. And it hurts. Sometimes it makes me miss my friends even though they didn’t go anywhere. It’s a weird feeling. But I know God is using this season to work on things in my heart and bring me into freedom. My prayer for you is that, where you find yourself in seasons of pain or hard transition, He would do the same for you.

Your Turn: Take some time to have an honest conversation with God today about something hard you are dealing with. Ask Him who in your life you can invite into that process to walk with you. Discuss this post in the comments below.

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