When You Feel Broken: 4 Ways to Find Hope
When you feel broken inside, it’s not easy to find hope to hold onto. I’ve lived through some broken seasons, broken in a thousand different ways. I invite you to join me on a difficult day, and we’ll talk about where to turn in these moments.
When You Feel Broken
It’s a grey March afternoon, and I drive down the Interstate feeling numb. I’m on my way to a doctor’s appointment that will offer glimpses into our family’s future. Our unborn child has a heart defect. Today, a pediatric cardiologist will determine how serious the defect is and offer a prognosis.
I’m terrified.
A Psalm comes to mind, and I whisper the words, but they get stuck somewhere between my head and my heart. All I really want is to feel this truth like it’s real, like it’s for me.
Instead, I feel very little.
I feel as though I’ve been swept into the drone of the engine and the sound of semi-trucks swooshing past in the mist.
Turning off the music in the car, I decide to sit with Jesus in the silence of my uncertainty.
Leaning Into Jesus When You Feel Broken
Sometimes this is enough: to simply sit with Jesus in all your emptiness and sadness. To let him be like the friend who shows up after the funeral and doesn’t offer a single cliché statement to make herself feel less uncomfortable with your pain. To let togetherness be enough for the moment.
I sit for a while in the silence, and then a thought comes to me like a cloud floating across cerulean skies:
“This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, a hope both sure and steadfast . . .” Hebrews 6:19
It’s a verse I memorized many months ago, before God began forming this little one within me, before I knew how desperately I would need his hope. We’ll return to this story shortly. First, let’s look at a few practical ways to hold onto hope on our darkest days.
How to Have Hope on the Darkest Days
1. Cling to the One whose heart breaks every time your heart breaks.
Often, difficult times prompt us to ask, “Where is God in the midst of this mess?”
We want to know why he hasn’t swooped in to save the day. The words of John’s gospel offer an answer.
Jesus’ close friend Lazarus has died. Jesus arrives on the scene, and Lazarus’ sister Martha runs to him with a grief-stricken heart. She says, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died” (John 11:32).
I can relate.
I have uttered the same words over my losses: “Lord, if you had been here, this dream would have come to pass. If you had been here, we wouldn’t be weeping over a gravesite. If you had been here, we wouldn’t be sitting in this sterile hospital room watching pigeons flutter carelessly out the window.”
It’s easy to blame God or take offense when life goes off the rails. Some of us wonder if God has abandoned us.
But what if we have it all wrong?
John 11:35 offers the most compelling answer to our question about what Jesus is doing in our deepest pain: “Jesus wept.”
Jesus isn’t standing in the distance measuring our faith or lack thereof. He has promised to be with us always.
Friend, he is closer than you think. And he is weeping with you.
He weeps when our hearts are broken and our lives are shattered. He promises to use our pain to make us more like him. Meanwhile, he weeps as we walk through the darkest valleys.
2. When you feel broken, trust that God will make all things new.
In the beginning, God created the whole world, and it was good. Sin ushered in the brokenness that led to tragedy, loss, death, despair, and pain. We were not created to endure the kind of suffering this world offers. We were created for pure and unhindered communion with God forever.
God will one day make all of this right. Until then, when unimaginable losses destroy our realities, we can extend grace to our broken hearts. We were never meant to endure this kind of pain. Our minds don’t know what to do with it.
God has promised the healing of all things and restoration. Until then, we turn to him and ask for guidance to find healing for our broken hearts. One day, God will right every wrong you have endured.
3. God wants you to bring your painful emotions to him so that he can unburden your heart.
I like to pull myself up by my bootstraps and rush through painful emotions. I’d rather ignore my feelings than feel them.
However, if we want God’s love to heal our broken hearts, we need to work through our emotions.
First, we ask God to help us name our emotions. We name bitterness, anger, sadness, despair, or shame.
Then, we ask God to help us study our emotions with curiosity and compassion. What is causing the emotion? What does God want to show us? This process can take a long time as we dig deeper and ask God to reveal the truth.
Last, we bring our emotions to God and ask him to unburden them. When God unburdens a heavy emotion, it loses its power over us. We might still need to deal with grief, fear, or hopelessness, but we have a sense that God is helping us.
4. When you feel broken, remind yourself that Christ alone heals hearts.
For years, I believed time was the secret to healing my broken heart. I believed the bad breakups, unhealthy relationships, and cycles of habitual sin would be healed with time.
This is where I had it all wrong.
Time is not the great healer.
Jesus is the great Healer.
He offers healing when he invites us to come as we are.
When we come to Jesus and receive his gift of rescue, asking for forgiveness and declaring faith in him, he freely embraces us just as we are.
Jesus heals us again and again. He offers healing when our worlds fall apart. He promises to be our portion and our hope, even in the darkest valleys. Our Savior reaches down from on high and pulls us out of the deep waters of despair. And in our most broken moments, he holds us and shares our tears.
~~~
When the appointment with the cardiologist is over, I make the long trip home. Instead of clear answers, it seems our lot for this season of life is to simply keep waiting and watching. There is, indeed, a defect in our child’s heart. However, the doctor offers hope that it might heal as our little one continues developing over the next 13 weeks.
To my surprise, this uncertain news doesn’t feel like a heavy burden. It feels more like waiting to see how the goodness of the Lord shows up in our situation. I’m lifted away from the worries and the fears, and from the quiet place, I hear this broken heart singing soft words of praise. (To read the full story and learn what happened with our unborn child, check out my book, Lean Into Grace, below.)
Calling All Parents and Grandparents!
As the parent of two sons and a daughter, I have a heart for helping parents develop deeper relationships with their children and with God. Our kids, ages 7, 12, and 16, share this vision. They have helped me write three family devotionals for parents or older relatives to read with the children and teens they love. I also recently released a teen devotional called Anchored, designed to help teens learn key biblical narratives and apply them to their lives. You can find these books here or read more below. 
Mother-Daughter Devotionals by a Mom and Daughter
Girl to Girl: 60 Mother-Daughter Devotions for a Closer Relationship and Deeper Faith is written for girls ages 7-12. It includes 60 devotions with Scripture, conversation starters, and a shared journaling section for moms and daughters after each devotion. I wrote this book with the help of our daughter, Bekah, when she was eleven. Find this one-of-a-kind shared devotional here.
Heart to Heart: A Mother-Daughter Devotional With 50 Devotions for Teen Girls is for teenage girls ages 13-20. It includes 50 devotions, each with a shared journaling section to help moms and daughters connect through writing. This is a great book for moms who want to communicate about awkward topics—like dating, sexuality, peer pressure, and more—but don’t know where to start. Bekah and I will help you right here.
Devotions for Boys by Boys
God’s Warrior: Devotions for Boys Who Want to Grow in Courage and Strength helps young boys, ages 5-13, learn what it means to trust God and become strong warriors for his kingdom. Now, more than ever, our world needs men who are willing to boldly carry God’s love into the world. I wrote this boys’ devotional book with our two young sons, Aiden and Caleb, ages six and eleven! You’ll enjoy their honesty as we teach boys how to be strong warriors for the Lord. Find this life-changing devotional book here.
These Books Are Free on Kindle Unlimited: God Wants to Heal, Restore, and Refresh You
God wants to work in your life to accomplish what you’ve been unable to do through willpower alone. He also wants to help you establish a rhythm of meeting with him daily as you trust him with the hard parts of your life. Click here to explore two books that will guide you: Be Still and Trust and Lean Into Grace. They are free on the Kindle Unlimited program and for sale in print.
Download Your Free Devotional Here
Set Free: Let God Do What You Cannot explores ten realms in which most of us need God to work in our lives and bring deliverance. We’ll talk about finding freedom from fear, worry, insecurity, bad habits, emotional pain, and more. This short online devotional will bless you as you let God accomplish what you’ve been unable to achieve through willpower. Get your download for free with promo code GRACE or for a donation of 3.99 here. Thank you. This small gift helps keep this ministry running.
I also offer a library of free online devotional eBooks for free. I invite you to explore the collection right here!
