Sorrow is Not Sad

For the past two years or so, I have struggled with anxiety and depression. The details of this struggle are many, so I will sum my experience up with a bottom line: I am a person who likes to be in control, and my sadness is not something that I can control.

Sorrow is a reality. Sorrow, like joy, anger, and all other feelings, will come, outstay its welcome, cause some effects, and be gone.

I often refer to the devotional My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers, when I need a great, succinct “bottom line” from God. Today the title was “Receiving Yourself in the Fires of Sorrow”. Ultimately, the idea is that yes, God allows suffering and sorrow to occur. However, Point One: “it is not for us to say that God has made a mistake in allowing them”, and Point Two, “If you receive yourself in the fires of sorrow, God will make you nourishment for other people.”

Point One. We like to blame God for bad things happening. So yes, God is all-powerful, and He has the ability to stop your pain. But I can tell you from the ridiculous amount of pain that I have been allowed to suffer, that I’m okay. Truly, God knows our limits, and He will sometimes bring us to the very edge of them, but there has never been a time where He tested me beyond what I was capable of handling, or perhaps more accurately, beyond what He was capable of helping me handle. God is not a bully. God does not sit upon a throne, and torture us for His pleasure. That is the very opposite of His character. What He does do is allow us the free will to make our own decisions, and thus, from the choices WE make, He does allow us to make our own mistakes. Mistakes can absolutely hurt, but is always there to comfort us when we are feeling out the consequences of our actions.

The devotional also says the “Sorrow removes a great deal of a person’s shallowness, but it does not always make that person better. Suffering either gives me to myself or it destroys me.” So, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, yes. But also, sorrow makes you better. We become more acquainted with ourselves and with our God when we experience sorrow. We grow, and with that growth, we lock away knowledge, make better choices, and help others to do the same.


As a Christian, I have chosen a "life verse" from the Bible, something that I identify with very closely on a spiritual level, and more simply, Words of God by which to live my life. They are:

2My brothers, count it all joy when you fall into divers temptations; 3Knowing this, that the trying of your faith works patience. 4But let patience have her perfect work, that you may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing. (James 1:2-4, AKJ)

I am blessed with a the strength to recognize hardship, pain, and trials as blessings. If I had to grow up without a father so that I might know the love of my Heavenly Father more intimately, and so that I would be able to minister, to identify with, and to have true understanding and compassion for another girl in the same situation, so be it.


I am simply thankful to know and understand God’s love. I will forever regard it as precious and completely incomparable to anything another human could show me. I wish for everyone to have hearts that are open to Him.