Do you ever feel like you’re drowning? Sometimes catastrophes roll in like storm clouds, one after another. Maybe you’ve been rejected by someone you love. Physical issues prevent you from working off stress the way you’d like. You gain weight and your clothes don’t fit. Or perhaps you can relate to this scenario: Misunderstandings at work boggle your mind. Trying to defend yourself only makes matters worse. Then, without warning, your company fires you. Without a paycheck you can’t make your rent and wonder what you’re going to do. Soaring inflation already meant you had to cut back on groceries. Now what? You don’t even have a reference from the company you gave your all.

These days, major disasters seem to lurk around every corner. They may be personal or take place on a much grander scale. According to a scientific report from the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction:

If current trends continue the world will go from around 400 disasters per year in 2015 to an onslaught of about 560 catastrophes a year by 2030.

Natural disasters like tornados, floods, and wildfires contribute to untold personal suffering. And, as we’ve all just learned, a traumatic event clear on the other side of the globe can impact us here at home. (Think the Ukraine/Russia war and skyrocketing gas prices adding to economic woes.) Financial struggles can also deeply impact relationships. So how can you make your suffering count, especially when its undertow threatens to take you out to sea?

Escaping the Pain

I don’t know about you, but when calamity strikes, I want comfort. As a lonely young single mom experiencing financial distress, I wanted to escape my suffering by running into a man’s arms. So much for being an independent woman. Yet longing for comforting contact isn’t just a female thing. Men too long for validation that they are enough. They, too, want to know that everything is going to be OK.

Most of us want someone to hold us, keep us safe, and guard us against the ever-worsening world of disasters, whatever they may be. Yet, faced with reality, it’s doesn’t take rocket science to realize that a human being doesn’t have enough strength to hold up the weight of the world. Only the One who made it can do that.

By using human methods to escape the pain, I ended up in excruciating agony. Drinking, partying, trying to find that significant other kept me in a constant state of chaos. It wasn’t until I gave up trying to escape the pain and looked to Jesus to carry me through it, that I came to see suffering in a very different light.

Embracing the Pain

Instead of trying to run from the reality of my situation or wallowing in self-pity, making my suffering count meant (and still does) asking Jesus what he wants me to learn. In his book, Walking with God through Pain and Suffering, Timothy Keller related another woman’s experience and how she learned to view her pain-filled circumstances:

What I discovered about heartaches and problems, especially the ones that are way beyond what we can handle, is that maybe those are the problems He [God] does permit precisely because we cannot handle them or the pain and anxiety they cause. But He can. I think He wants us to realize that trusting Him to handle these situations is actually a gift. His gift of peace to us in the midst of the craziness. Problems don’t disappear and life continues, but He replaces the sting of those heartaches with hope, which has been an amazing realization (p. 108-109.)

My problems didn’t disappear either. The heartache of a broken relationship and money challenges continued. So did the difficulties of being a single mom and trying my best to work, go to school, and raise my young son. But in those circumstances, I started learning to trust God. By reading His Word, I discovered that He is BIG enough to help me deal with reality, and that awareness gave me hope. Keller’s insightful woman expressed it well:

Hope comes not in the solution to the problem but in focusing on Christ, who facilitates the change (p. 109).

She’s right. Hope comes in seeing how much God loves us and realizing how faithful He is to help us rise above our circumstances. In kind of the same way that Peter walked on water as long as he kept his eyes on Jesus (see Matthew 14:29-33), we become more than we can think or imagine as we trust Jesus as our Lord and Savior. I’m convinced that trust is the one gift we can give Him–choosing to trust Him regardless of how bleak the future may look. The more we proclaim that trust with praise, the more real it becomes and the more valuable our gift.

Don’t Waste Your Suffering

There’s no doubt that life in the real world can be tough, full of unexpected challenges and pain. However, focusing on the great God of the universe not only brings tremendous comfort, it makes our suffering count. We see God’s faithfulness as our perspective shifts from this world to God’s kingdom. So, even when I feel most alone, my prayer is that Jesus will help me apply 2 Corinthians 10:5.

We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.

Whenever I fix my eyes on Jesus and pray that prayer, He helps me stop speculating on the “what ifs” and gives me peace. He lifts my eyes from this sin-filled world to prepare me for eternity. So, even when storm clouds roll in with circumstances far beyond our coping capabilities, we can find hope in Christ and the comfort we so desperately long for in His warm embrace as we get ready for an eternal realm where there is no more pain and sorrow.