God Cares About Your Comfort
As a little girl, I remember being sad a lot. I probably struggled with depression from a young age, though I didn’t realize it until life came crashing down in my mid-20’s.
A nagging internal pain plagued me. I couldn’t describe it at the time, but I felt it—the combination of loneliness, rejection, and fear. Loneliness stands out the most. Despite growing up in a very “normal” family, hanging out with friends, and doing all the usual kid activities, I felt very much alone.
Our household was typical of the 1980s-1990s. My mom took care of my younger brother and I, and my Dad was a workaholic. Our every physical need was provided for. We ate healthy food, were kept very busy—enrolled in lots of activities, got an excellent education (well I did, my brother was a bit of a loveable delinquent and had to be shipped off to the Coast Guard. Just kidding, he went willingly). Physically, all the boxes were checked. Emotionally, though, my parents struggled.
I truly believe my parents did the very best they could, with what they were given. We are Polish. We are hard workers—doers, stubborn, and not good with emotions. At least my parents were not. What they knew, what they had been taught, was to provide materially for their children. Their parents grew up with little, and their grandparents, fresh off the boat from Poland, even less. So their objective was providing for us physically, and making sure we had all the physical tools needed to succeed in life.
Emotional support was sorely lacking, though. My dad worked very hard and wasn’t home often. When he was, he was something of a passive American dad trope, Ray Barone from Everybody Loves Raymond or Tim Taylor from Home Improvement. This left my mom to shoulder all the burdens of the home and raising me and my brother. She dealt with anxiety and depression, and was often stressed and bitter from feeling alone raising the kids.
My parents were not able to be emotionally present for my brother and me. I do not remember ever talking about feelings. In fact, I recall being afraid of sharing my feelings. Conversations revolved around our activities and our metrics—the results of those activities, not our emotional struggles. It was assumed that I was “all good” so I naturally assumed the external posture of being “all good,” low maintenance, and independent. As the first born, I also unknowingly took on an unwieldy amount of personal responsibility. I learned how to perform and shoved down my feelings. The anxieties. The insecurities. The sadness. Until I hugged my horse and it all boiled over to the surface.
The Need for Comfort
For a period of time, we had a small family farm— a few horses: my aunt’s Thoroughbred, my Quarter Horse, and a retired Standardbred trotter from a nearby barn stayed with us. Plus a chicken who laid one glorious egg per day, geese, dogs, and a plethora of rabbits (of which I entered the best specimens in the annual town far. Was I a weird kid? Maybe, but I played sports, so that probably balanced it out, right?). Anyway, we had a nice little assortment of animals.
Always a sensitive soul, I felt things incredibly deeply. When I was about twelve or thirteen, I remember going out to the barn and grabbing my horse by the neck and sobbing. Not once but many times. I can’t recall the exact circumstances that contributed, but what I do remember is that I felt a rare and deep relief. Understood, even though I completely get that this might not make sense to most people, though you horse people probably get it. (Oh no, my weirdness on display again!)
The core emotion that I felt, and I can remember it strongly to this day, was comfort. It is the only time I can recall feeling it during my upbringing. While the comfort of an animal is a very imperfect form of comfort, I believe it was God who met me in those moments.
I needed comfort then, and when I began healing after burnout and PTSD in my 20’s, I began to delve into it more deeply. When you’re dealing with debilitating anxiety and depression, all you want is for those struggles to be gone, fixed, now. And when they’re not budging, or progress is slow, or at times things seem to be getting worse, it makes you want to freak out even more. Patience is an integral part of the process. Comfort is another essential element.
Whether you’re healing in your mental health, dealing with external stressors like illness or job loss, or facing delays in something you thought would have happened a long time ago, comfort is key.
Comfort that things are going to be ok.
Comfort that you can be a hot mess.
Comfort that you don’t have to have it all figured out.
Comfort in the grieving.
Comfort in the delays.
Comfort enables us to walk through tough times. It helps our resilience, holding our hand so we can rise again after we fall.
Does God Really Care About Our Comfort?
The legalists will tell you that God doesn’t care about your comfort. But that simply isn’t true. He cares deeply about it. After all, the Holy Spirit is called The Comforter (John 14:26)! More on that in a minute, but first, let’s take a quick look at some of the places where people get hung up.
Oversimplifications make tasty clickbait, and comfort is a perfect example. Headlines like, “God doesn’t care about your comfort,” accompanied by verses such as “deny yourself, take up your cross,” and “he who seeks to save his life will lose it” take the undiscerning by emotional storm. When removed from context and laced with accusation, scriptures are turned into piercing arrows. This is exactly what the Pharisees did. Modern day Pharisees use the same tactics.
But the scriptures reveal their beauty within context, and work together as a whole. The heart behind those verses is that following Christ demands absolutely everything. You can’t love your own life, pleasure, money, or even your own family more than God. When anything else takes the primary position of what you’re chasing after, you’ve made an idol out of it.
Believers must not seek, as a paramount goal, a comfortable life. That’s what the world does. Hoards up money, success, fame. Seeks as the primary objective self-fulfillment, self-preservation.
In following Christ, we are guaranteed discomfort. Jesus faced it, his disciples faced it. We will too. A game of Bible-roulette has a pretty good chance of landing you on a calamity faced by one of our beloved heroes! In my opinion, there’s not much greater discomfort than being hated, which Jesus assured us we would be, but if you need more reminders of the troublesome nature of our calling, here you go: we’re in a spiritual war, saints in a fallen world, being sanctified, in the midst of a maturation/disciplining process, and walking by faith. All of which are super uncomfortable!
As a personal example, in my journey of healing from chronic anxiety and panic attacks, I have had to face fears thousands of times. Each time it was utterly uncomfortable. Anyone who is healing and undergoing a personal transformation must embrace getting comfortable with discomfort. Similar to lifting weights at the gym, discomfort stretches us and produces growth.
But in the midst of all the discomfort, God provides His comfort! We often have a hard time receiving it though. And our earliest experiences often tell the story.
Why We Struggle to Receive Comfort
We are on an epic, and sometimes treacherous journey of faith. In the midst of it, we are met with God’s comfort. Indeed it is His comfort enables us to “take heart” and walk this uncomfortable journey at all!
Most of us, however, were not set up for success in this area. While we’re besties with our creature comforts—Netflix, takeout, and the like— we lack a compass for God’s comfort. The reason for this stems back to our upbringing. God designed comfort to flow from both parents, but especially our mothers. If mom struggled with her own battles, or didn’t receive comfort herself, she wasn’t able to give it out.
While our moms cleaned up our bike-spill wounds (ramp jumps 4 life!), put band-aids on, and gave us a hug— representations of physical comfort—emotional comfort may have been absent. If they didn’t receive comfort for their own tough emotions, it’s unlikely that they had any idea what to do with ours.
Parents are supposed to be a safe place for their kids to process the tough things, but when feelings are off limits, children are left emotionally abandoned and feel alone in their struggles. That’s scary. If you’ve experienced childhood emotional neglect (CEN) you know exactly what I’m talking about. And you’ve probably got some decent anxiety going on as a result. A lack of comfort makes you feel very much on your own, and is a breeding ground for fear.
Whereas our friends with more emotionally mature parents have the innate ability to receive God’s comfort and comfort themselves, the rest of us flail anxiously during turbulent times, wondering what is wrong with us. Since you were never comforted, you have no idea how to tune into God’s comfort during tough times. We all need comfort, but especially those who grew up without it.
Comfort for the Uncomfortable Journey
Thankfully, God’s comfort is available to us. He restores that which we didn’t receive.
One of the greatest proofs of how much God values comfort is that the Spirit Himself is called “The Comforter.”
This facet of the Holy Spirit’s operation involves coming to one’s aid, and help along the way (John 14:26, G3875 parakletos).
The Comforter draws near and says: I am with you. It’s going to be ok.
The Holy Spirit is by our side, strengthening us as we go through trials, and reassuring us that we’re going to come out the other side.
We are also comforted by the Father:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also abounds through Christ.
- 2 Cor. 1:3-5
Look at all the comfort in those verses!
The word comforts (G3870 parakaleo) here carries the essence of the above word used for the Holy Spirit, with a few additional nuances:
To call to one’s side
To exhort, console, encourage
Strengthen by consolation
To encourage, strengthen
To instruct, teach
We don’t really need comfort when things are going well. But we are desperate for it when the going gets tough—in our tribulation, as the verses above say.
Honestly, His comfort is what kept me from going completely off the rails at times in my journey. When I was neck deep in constant panic. When I started over in my career. When things weren’t working out like I thought they would. Or were taking way too long.
Comfort calms us in chaos. It doesn’t fix all our problems, but it enables us to move through them, knowing that things are going to be ok. Without comfort, anxiety kicks into high gear, scrambling for solutions, either internal or external.
When comfort is absent, false comforts will try to fill that place. Wounds fester, anxiety kicks up, and we try to self-soothe. Alcohol, hookups, porn, drugs, overworking, constant scrolling, binge-watching… pick your pacifier. They’re a poor substitute for God’s comfort, but for those who haven’t experienced true love and comfort, they’re a temporary relief. No matter what age we are, when battles get tough, the human heart needs comfort. Instead of shaming those with battles, we are called to restore love and comfort to their wounded hearts.
To do this, we must receive comfort ourselves. As the verse above says, we comfort others with the same comfort we ourselves are comforted by God. If we want to be healing vessels, we must allow God to comfort us. Then we can be there for others when they’re going through it.
A red flag that we haven’t processed our own issues with God or received His comfort: spouting Christian cliches and slapping scriptures on those who are struggling. These unhelpful reflexes reveal our discomfort with emotions. The opposite of helpful, these “quick fixes” push people further into feeling alone in their pain.
If you want to be a safe place for others, process your stuff with God!
What most of us need, in our deepest struggles, is not an answer to our problems, but simply the reassurance that it’s going to be ok. That God is with us. That those closest to us are with us. That we are going to make it through. In a word: comfort! In receiving it for ourselves, we can offer its healing balm to others.
After a self-punishing majority of my life where I was pure grit and hustle, the fact that God cares about my comfort blows my mind! He doesn’t distance Himself from me, but His Holy Spirit draws near, giving me the calm reassurance that it's going to be ok. And with that, I can pause, breathe, and take the next step in the journey, even when the path is narrow and all hell is breaking loose.
Reflection:
What’s been your experience with comfort (or the lack thereof)?
In whatever challenges you're currently going through, what would it look for you to embrace God's comfort?