Unseen Battles: Finding Comfort in God’s Understanding

“I am weary with my moaning;
every night I flood my bed with tears;
I drench my couch with my weeping.
My eye wastes away because of grief…” Psalm 6:6-7

As a young child, I developed this hypothesis that my disability would disappear by age 13. My reasoning and support for this still elude me. When my hypothesis proved invalid (shocker, I know), I plummeted into utter despair, feeling like I had no one to talk to. My tight knit family’s unspoken rule on faith and hard emotions were that these two topics were generally off-limits.

My mom and dad had different faith backgrounds. Rather than force my older sister, younger brother, and me to practice a particular faith, my parents felt strongly that we should each make the choice if or when we were ready. So, we chose, as a family, to avoid the topic.

When it came to my disability, my parents—as immigrants from war-torn, Middle Eastern countries—approached it as they did every other challenge: with an unwieldy amount of grit, strength, and determination. These proved to be invaluable character traits as parents of a child with cerebral palsy (CP). They unequivocally embraced the hard reality, which my physical therapist had shared several years earlier, that I would navigate the world using a wheelchair rather than walking. If this news was at all devastating, my siblings and I witnessed no evidence of it as children.

My earliest memories confirm that my entire family focused on fostering my skills and abilities rather than dwelling on my limitations. To this day, I find it difficult to adequately express the gratitude, love, and respect I have for the loving, grace-filled way they navigated such difficult and unexpected terrain. Their outlook on my disability shaped my own perspective, paving the way for much of my future success.

As I transitioned to middle school, a shift occurred. Although outwardly everything seemed fine, I wrestled to come to terms with the reality of my disability. I questioned almost daily, “Why me? Why this? And, what will this mean?”

Rather than talk about my feelings, I ignored them. So, they instead emerged disguised as sarcasm and anger. I felt like the author of Psalm 6 when he says, “I am weary with moaning; every night I flood my bed with tears; I drench my couch with my weeping.” Maybe you have been there, or maybe you are there right now. Take heart, we have a God who is compassionate, feeling both sorrow for our difficulties and empathy for our pain. He hears our weeping (v. 8) and our pleas (v. 9) and accepts our prayers. He counts our tossings (Psalm 56:8), and puts our tears in a bottle.

It may seem strange that God would keep track of the most painful and challenging times of our lives – oftentimes the very moments we would prefer to forget. But, Revelations 21:4 tells us that “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore….”  He is keeping a record, because one day He will make all things right. He will replace every ounce of sorrow with joy.