When You Feel Like a Broken Vessel

Trusting God in the Middle of Suffering

There are times in our human existence when we simply hurt. Real pain. Real suffering. The kind that doesn’t have a quick fix or a tidy verse to tape over it. If you’ve lived long enough, you know the season I mean, and if you’re in it right now, I want you to know you are not the first to walk it, and you are not walking it alone.

Just last week something occurred in my life that led me to this verse. I keep coming back to Psalm 31. Read these words slowly:

Psalm 31:9–14 (ESV)

Be gracious to me, O LORD, for I am in distress; my eye is wasted from grief; my soul and my body also. For my life is spent with sorrow, and my years with sighing; my strength fails because of my iniquity, and my bones waste away. Because of all my adversaries I have become a reproach, especially to my neighbors, and an object of dread to my acquaintances; those who see me in the street flee from me. I have been forgotten like one who is dead; I have become like a broken vessel. For I hear the whispering of many— terror on every side!— as they scheme together against me, as they plot to take my life. But I trust in you, O LORD; I say, “You are my God.”

The suffering feels familiar

I connect so deeply with verses 9 through 13. Look at how the writer describes it, not just as a spiritual struggle, but as something he feels in his body. His eye is wasted from grief. His strength is failing. His bones waste away. This is what pain does. Our mental health journey and the situational problems life hands us can truly make our lives comparable to the suffering the writer is going through here.

The journey of poor mental health can make you feel so alone and isolated. I am speaking from experience. I remember those dark days and those long nights where I felt exactly like verse 12, forgotten like one who is dead, like a broken vessel. Cracked. Set aside. Certain that no one saw me and no one was coming.

If that is where you are, please hear me: that feeling is real, but it is not the final word.

But

Here is what I know now, standing in the healing I have found through therapy and through the church, and it lives in one small, mighty word at the start of verse 14. But.

“But I trust in you, O LORD; I say, ‘You are my God.'”

The circumstances hadn’t changed yet. The whispering was still there. The grief was still heavy. And still, the psalmist turns his face and says, but I trust You. It is true. I can trust in God. Not because the pain vanished, but because He held me through it, often through the very ordinary means of good counsel, safe people, and a community of faith that refused to let me disappear.

When you have done everything right and still lost everything

If we look to the story of Job, we meet a man who lost nearly everything, his children, his livelihood, his health. His suffering was immense, and it was not because he had done something wrong. Job being just as human as you and me ask God, Why

Job 13:24 — “Why do you hide your face and count me as your enemy?”

Job 7:20–21 — “Why have you made me your mark? Why have I become a burden to you? Why do you not pardon my transgression…?”

Job 10:2 — “let me know why you contend against me.”

Job 10:18 — “Why did you bring me out from the womb?”

Job is honest,  As the book goes on, he asks the question so many of us are afraid to say out loud. He asks God why. I have done that. In fact, I asked God why just last week.

We tend to believe that if we could only understand the reason, if God would just explain Himself, then, finally, we would have peace. So we wait for the explanation.

The peace that is bigger than the explanation

Here is the beautiful, unexpected thing: when God finally answers Job, He never gives him the reason. Instead, He gives him something far greater. He gives Job Himself.

Job 38:4–11 (ESV)

“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements—surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone, when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy? Or who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb, when I made clouds its garment and thick darkness its swaddling band, and prescribed limits for it and set bars and doors, and said, ‘Thus far shall you come, and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stayed’?”

Where were you, Job, when I laid the foundations of the earth? Where were you when I scooped out the ocean and set the boundaries the waves cannot cross? It is as if God is saying: You are asking Me for a reason, but what you really need is to remember who I am.

And it works. The peace Job receives does not come from an answer. It comes from an encounter, from being reminded that the God who holds galaxies and shapes the seas also holds him.

In my own suffering, and even in my own iniquity, that is where I have found my peace: in God’s great plan and His great power. Not in finally figuring it all out, but in trusting the One who already has. 

I pray you find that same peace today. I pray you look to the heavens and see that Jesus is on the throne. Heaven rules!

If you or a loved one are struggling, you don’t have to figure this out on your own. Click the contact button to reach out to Abi. Abi will respond to your message within 24 hours.

If you are in crisis, please call or text 988 right now, the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline is available 24/7. Please do not walk this journey alone.

A miracle happened in my life. It just took time.