Suffering & Hardship
I am not the same person I was before this happened. Will I ever feel like myself again?
“He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds.”
This psalm was sung by a people coming back from exile to a ruined city. The line about binding up wounds sits among verses about God rebuilding Jerusalem and gathering the scattered. The healing described is real and it is slow, and it happens to people who are not going back to how things were but forward into something rebuilt out of the rubble.
“Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort; Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.”
Paul, writing out of real distress, describes God as the one who comforts us in all our trouble so that we can later comfort others with the comfort we ourselves received. He is not saying the suffering was worth it for the sake of usefulness. He is saying the comfort given to you now is not used up. It becomes something you carry to other people.
A path forward
Stop measuring your recovery against who you used to be. Ask instead what a good week looks like for the person you are now, and aim at that.
Return to one ordinary practice you have let slip: a Sunday service, a regular meal, a walk you always used to take. Familiar rhythms often carry you back before your feelings catch up.
Consider talking to a counselor as well as praying. Some of what changed in you is grief and some is trauma, and the second usually needs a trained person alongside a faithful one.
Closing verse
“To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, that he might be glorified.”
- Isaiah 61:3
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