Sometimes you have to tell God that you are upset. Not because He cannot handle your honesty, but because He already knows what is happening inside your heart.
Maybe you feel like you have hit rock bottom. You hate your job. You do not have the relationship you hoped you would have. Things at home are difficult. Finances are stressful. You have been waiting for something to change, and instead of weeks or months, it has been years. You keep thinking, “When do I finally get a break?”
Sometimes it feels like you are drowning while everyone else is moving forward. You can feel isolated, exhausted, and completely alone.
Sylvia Plath’s "The Bell Jar" comes to mind when I think about this. There is an image of a fig tree where the main character sees countless possible lives in front of her, but she becomes paralyzed because she feels like choosing one means losing all the others. Eventually, the weight of those possibilities becomes unbearable. Yet her story also reminds us that suffering can look different when someone finally receives care, compassion, and understanding.
I think about Jesus’ words in Matthew 16:24: “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”
And then He says something even harder: “Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 16:25).
There are seasons when I genuinely feel like I have lost parts of my life. The joyful parts. The exciting parts. The parts I thought would be here by now. Sometimes following God does not feel like gaining everything I wanted. Sometimes it feels like surrendering things I desperately wanted to keep.
But maybe this is where God is teaching me something I could not learn anywhere else.
If I cannot find my joy in my circumstances, where will I find it?
I can look to Him.
Not because my circumstances do not matter. They do. God cares about the job you hate, the relationship you are longing for, the financial stress keeping you awake, the tension at home, and the loneliness you cannot explain.
You can tell Him that you are angry. You can tell Him that you are tired. You can tell Him that you do not understand why this season has lasted so long.
You do not have to pretend before God.
But even here, He is still God.
Even here, He is still near.
Even here, He is still worth following.
Maybe losing the life you thought you would have is not the end of your story. Maybe, in the middle of surrender, God is teaching you how to receive a life that is rooted in Him rather than dependent on everything going according to plan.
Your circumstances may change. Your prayers may eventually be answered differently than you imagined. But Christ remains.
And when everything else feels uncertain, He can still become the place where your soul learns to breathe again.
- Ellie Mont