When You Struggle to Feel God's LoveExemplo

A Prayer For When God’s Love Feels Like Hate

Scripture:

“All of my best friends despise me, and those I love have turned against me.” Job 19:19 (CSB)

“Darkness is my closest friend.” Psalm 88:18 (ESV)

Today I offer you a prayer based on the book of Job and the darkest lament in the Psalms (Ps. 88).

I wrote this while I suffered in a four-year fight with stage-4 endometriosis, four major surgeries, the deportation of family members, the death of my grandmother (Mamita), extreme financial stress, unresolved chronic back pain, and the disintegration of a close friendship.

Though I don’t wish my struggles upon you, I offer this prayer as a companion to you in yours:

Father,

What I’ve wanted from You are answers—clarity, simplification, direction, precision—because the evils of our world and the traumas don’t make sense to me.

Your mysterious ways can be enraging. You answer prayer, then You don’t. You protect Your people, then You don’t. Yet You demand our allegiance? Your seeming randomness feels cruel, as though You delight in our confusion and misery. So I’ve wanted answers. I’ve wanted You to defend Your frustrating ways in court because a case for a good God doesn’t look so good.

But there’s a contradiction in my demand for answers. As I suffer so much loss, the people who harm me the most are the ones trying to offer simplifications:

“Just have faith, and it’ll work out.”
“Well, no one is good. We all deserve to suffer.”
“Cheer up. Look at all God has done for you.”
“Maybe you have some unconfessed sin.”
“God always heals His children.”
“God will open your womb. I know it.”

The simplifications sting the most. They dismiss the depths of my grief, and they hold no space for the utter mystery of Your ways. They try to skip, jump, and run past the valley of deep darkness where You sometimes lead us—the valley where death still stings, where we can’t see what You’re doing, where we grasp for the slightest indication of Your rod and staff (Ps. 23).

The pithy, precise prescriptions for my layered, complex pain are the most bitter of medicines. They’re “miserable counselors” like Job’s friends (Job 16:2).

God, I’ve wanted answers. And I’ve hated them. I’ve wanted clarity. And I’ve hated others’ attempts at offering it. I’ve wanted a more simple God—one who doesn’t wrap Himself in dark clouds (Ps. 18:11). But I’ve bristled at the boxes we’ve made for You.

I want what I don’t want. I know not what I ask.

You are God, and I am not.

Call to Action:

Maybe today’s meditation reflects how you’ve been feeling. If so, perhaps pray this with me today: God, please, send me even the slightest breeze of Your love.