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Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.
Proverbs 3:5 ESV

It was one of those dog days of summer three years into my journey as a widow. I was tired. The responsibilities of raising four children seemed to pile on that day.

Desperate to turn my mood around, I found myself searching on Google: “how to fix a bad day”. Thousands of suggestions streamed in from exercise to eating chocolate.

Trouble is, I had already tried most of them! And they all worked… for a while.

But only a while. When the real problem is an empty ache in your heart, the world’s solutions only go so far.

Exercise gets endorphins to kick in. You’ll definitely feel physically and emotionally better. But meeting fitness and health targets fixes only one part of your problem.

Calling a friend helps, but you must be careful about their counsel. Friends don’t always encourage you to turn to Christ.

Counting your blessings. I do this every day, beginning with my kids’ smiles. But even when I focus on what in life is good, grief has a way of intruding on my gratitude.

Helping someone else works to remind me that I’m partnering with God. A day of soup kitchen duty gets me to stop thinking about myself. Still, that nagging ache of grief doesn’t just go away.

Getting in the Word- Notice I didn’t put this first on my list? No wonder I was struggling!

But it was remembering His Scripture which led be back to peace when all else failed.

I had gotten to the end of failing at “fixing” my bad day. I simply landed on my knees in my bedroom in tears before God.

“Lord, I’ve tried everything, and I can’t rid myself of this awful feeling of disappointment. My life feels like constant toil and no joy. I’m so tired. I’ve asked You to fill me with hope and joy and gratitude, and I still don’t feel it.”

Through those tears that I remembered,

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.
Proverbs 3:5 ESV

I simply couldn’t lean on my own understanding. Why couldn’t I make the pain go away? Why did God allowed it to continue?

Then my questions led to a wonder. If the pain wasn’t going away and God was allowing it, why did I continue to love and trust Him? That may sound like a rebellious question, but it’s not, because I knew why I continued to be faithful.

Because I believe Him to the core.

And when you believe to the core that God is in control, you feel less shaken by circumstances. Once I recognized that, my conversation with the Lord changed. “God, I don’t know why You haven’t lifted my spirits. But somehow I know to keep trusting You and keep following You. So I guess I’ll just accept this pain as something You’ve allowed and keep praising You, because what else can I do? I simply love You.”

If you haven’t experienced what came next, you might find it hard to believe. A surge of peace blew through me instantaneously.

Then it was gone—that ache–the thing that was getting under my craw. Not minimized, not set aside for the moment, but gone.

You know that gnawing you feel about an issue? When it’s truly gone, you know it this way—somehow you’ve figured out that the gnawing thought you had was a lie.

I had been believing a lie-that my life full of responsibilities was not worthy or beautiful. Once that lie was revealed, it no longer had power over me. My life looked beautiful in my eyes- from responsibilities to my walk alone as a widow.

Only Christ can do that. Only He can truly fix a bad day.

Dear Lord, Please help my sisters know there’s only one complete healing answer to turning a bad day around, and its Christ. Help her to stay in Your Word. Give her heart the sustenance it needs so that when she finally stops trying to do it all and surrender, Your Word will bring her back into peace with You. Amen.