Last Thursday was a really bad day.

I’m talking about a horrible, terrible, miserable, no good, very bad day.

After work, I drove home to take one of my children to an appointment . . . but we never made it to that appointment. Some truly bad choices were made before we even got into the car, and we couldn’t go. It was traumatic for all involved, and missing the appointment was merely the icing on a garbage cake.

By the time that crisis was resolved, I was physically and emotionally spent. I wanted to crawl into my bed and ignore the whole world. The horrible, terrible, miserable, no good, very bad world.

As I considered collapsing under the covers and hiding from all the things making me hurt, I remembered something. My friend had invited me to a Bible study that was beginning that evening. Because of my daughter’s appointment, I hadn’t been able to go . . . but now I could. I weighed the options:

Go to the Bible study and open up to people I didn’t know well or didn’t know at all?

Go and run the risk of monopolizing the conversation? (Or go and spend the whole time crying because that’s what I felt like doing anyway?)

Stay home and wallow in self-pity and misery, rehashing the horrible ordeal with my husband?

Or stay home and hide, numbing my feelings with half a bag of chocolate chips from the back of the pantry and hours of Instagram reels?

I decided to go to the Bible study.

Though my friend had invited me, the group of women meeting was mostly people I didn’t know. And they were reading a book that, when I’d heard about it and read the synopsis, didn’t appeal to me. I was glad for the chance to connect with other women and discuss Jesus, but I was also a little nervous about the whole thing.

Plus, I wondered if going made me a negligent mother or a callous wife. After all, shouldn’t I stay home and help my kids process what had happened that afternoon? Shouldn’t I be there in case my husband wanted to talk about how he felt or what he thought about it?

Maybe . . . but we’d already processed and would certainly continue the next day. And another part of me knew I needed to get out of my house. I needed to choose connection over hiding. I needed to take care of my own heart before I could help heal anyone else’s.

So I did it. I drove to the designated coffee shop and ordered a caramel latte with oat milk, hoping the wisdom of avoiding regular milk (because I’m allergic) would balance out the foolishness of consuming caffeine so close to bedtime. I smiled and said, “Nice to meet you,” and tried to remember the new names. I listened as they discussed the first chapter of a book I hadn’t read and wondered if, when I started the audiobook on my drive home, it would resonate for me like it was for them.

And when one of my new friends said, “You have kids, right? So how’s that going?” I shared the story of my day and let them into my messy life.

Telling others about my horrible day didn’t fix all the problems. Spending a couple of hours with five other women didn’t allow me to go back in time or erase the memory of every bad thing that had happened.

But it did minister to my hurting heart. It gave me a moment to stop and breathe. It gave me a few minutes to focus on something other than my situation, and it reminded me that I’d never been alone in any of it. See, mixed with our conversation about the book I hadn’t read were snippets of each woman’s story and the places God has met them over the years.

They talked about how He’d met them at the bottom, how He’d stayed with them, and helped them up.

They shared the ways God gave them strength in every kind of struggle and how He was still holding them close and guiding them through hard spots.

They helped me remember the things I know to be true about God and His incredible love and care for me. They reminded me that it’s okay to not be okay, that God doesn’t expect us to handle it (whatever “it” is) on our own, and that sharing a burden is always better than trying to carry it all by myself.

If you’re having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day (or week or month or season), you might feel like I did last week. You may be tempted to stuff all the hard feelings, to hide under the covers, and refuse to come out until the world plays nice, or to simply go radio silent. You might think you have to take care of everyone else first and maybe then you can rest or recover. Or perhaps you feel like it’s better to keep your mess to yourself, or you’re afraid nobody will understand or care or be able to help.

Fight those urges, friend.

Don’t hide. Don’t stay home or stay quiet in your pain. Reach out. Connect. Allow someone safe to see the real you, to hear a bit more of your story. And then listen as they share how God has met them along the way and loved them through their pain.

Let them help you remember the things you know to be true.

“Therefore, I will always remind you about these things — even though you already know them and are standing firm in the truth you have been taught.”
2 Peter 1:12 NLT

 

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