“The Lord is close to the broken-hearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” — Psalm 34:18
The Particular Cruelty of Hard Seasons
Hard seasons have a quality that is difficult to describe to someone who has not experienced them: they make you feel invisible. You can be surrounded by people — at church, at the dinner table, at a gathering of friends — and still be profoundly, achingly alone. The disconnection is not always between you and others. Sometimes it is between you and yourself. You stop recognising the person in the mirror. The things that used to bring delight sit flat and lifeless. The future, which once held colour, has gone grey.
And in the middle of all of this, a question creeps in that may be the hardest of all to hold: Where is God? Not as a theological question, but as a desperate, personal one. If He is good, and if He is near, why does it feel like this? Why does the space where His presence used to be feel so quiet?
The Dark Night of the Soul
The Christian mystical tradition has a name for this experience: the dark night of the soul, described most fully by the 16th century Spanish mystic St John of the Cross. It refers to a period in the spiritual life where the felt sense of God’s presence withdraws — not because God has gone, but because He is drawing us into a deeper, less feeling-dependent form of faith. The darkness, John of the Cross argues, is not punishment. It is purification. It is the stripping away of what we have leaned on in place of God Himself, until what remains is trust that does not require feeling.
This is not comfortable theology. But it is honest theology. And for the person in the middle of a dark night, it may offer something more valuable than comfort: the knowledge that others have been here before, that the church has named this experience, and that it does not mean God has abandoned you. It may mean He trusts you enough to walk this road.
“God’s nearness is not proportional to how well you are doing. He is always closer than your next breath.”
Jesus in the Darkness
The most profound moment of God’s solidarity with human suffering comes from the cross. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). These are not the words of a man who did not believe. They are the words of a man who was fully in the darkness — and who still addressed it to God. The cry was not abandonment of faith. It was faith in its rawest, most costly form: the refusal to pretend, the insistence on bringing the real experience to the Father, even when the Father felt entirely absent.
If Jesus, the Son of God, experienced the felt absence of God and still held on — then your experience of that darkness is not evidence of failure. It is evidence that you are walking a road He has already walked. He is not an observer of your suffering from a safe distance. He entered it. He is in it with you.
The Gift of Others in Hard Seasons
God Tends to Show Up in Hands and Voices
We might expect God, in our hardest moments, to speak in unmistakable divine ways — visions, audible voices, overwhelming peace that arrives like a wave. And sometimes, mercifully, He does. But more often, He shows up in the people He places around us. A friend who calls at the exact right moment. A counsellor who helps us name something we have been carrying for years without words. A stranger who says something so precisely what we needed to hear that it could not have been coincidence.
This is not a lesser form of God’s presence. It is one of His primary forms. The word “Emanuel” — God with us — was not only fulfilled in the birth of Jesus. It is being fulfilled every time a person of God chooses to show up in someone else’s darkness and simply be present. You are allowed to let people in. You are allowed to need others. God designed you for community precisely because He knew you would face seasons too heavy to carry alone.
Seeking Support Is Not Giving Up
If you are in a hard season, please hear this gently but clearly: seeking help is not a sign that your faith has failed. It is wisdom. It is courage. And for many people, it is the very pathway through which God brings healing. A counsellor who helps you process grief, or trauma, or long-standing patterns of thought, is not competing with God. In many cases, they are His instrument. The same God who heals in response to prayer also heals through the dedicated, skilled, compassionate work of a mental health professional. Both are His provision. Both are His grace.
You would not refuse a cast for a broken arm in the name of trusting God. You would not decline surgery in the name of prayer, though prayer would accompany it. The mind is as real and as physical as the body it inhabits. It deserves the same care.
If Today Is Hard
If you are reading this from the inside of a hard season, we want to say something very simple to you. You are seen. You are not forgotten. And the God who made you has not turned His face away. He is “close to the broken-hearted” (Psalm 34:18). Not near to the healed. Not close to those who have it together. Close to the broken-hearted. That is where He places Himself.
You do not have to explain yourself before coming to Him. You do not have to clean up your emotions or tidy your theology. Come angry. Come exhausted. Come with nothing but the weight of the season and the willingness to be held. He has received every version of that before, and He has never once turned anyone away. And if the weight is more than you can carry — please reach out. To a trusted person. To a counsellor. To a crisis line if needed. You were never meant to carry this alone. And asking for help is not giving up. It is one of the bravest and most faithful things you can do.
Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me. — Psalm 23:4