Prayers from Rock Bottom

God Will Give You More Than You Can Handle

“God will never give you more that you can handle.” Oh, boy. That’s a sacred cow I’d like to slaughter. You, too? Okay, let’s do it.

This is a phrase that is often thrown around to encourage people who are going through hard things. To be honest, I have never been able to figure out exactly what is encouraging about the statement. Perhaps it’s meant to communicate that God is in control and He knows what He’s doing? I will certainly grant that. I think its also supposed to communicate that I’m strong enough to handle what has been slopped onto my plate, and I just don’t know it yet. I don’t know about you, but to that I say “not a chance”. When meltdowns and physical aggression from your growing autistic child seem to control your household, I imagine it proves to be more than you can handle. When their neurotypical siblings experience anxiety, disappointment, and isolation as a result, I imagine it proves to be more than you can handle. School refusal, hygiene refusal, and just constant refusal (PDA anyone!?) has likely proven to be more than you can handle. Load of laundry after load of laundry due to accident after accident has proven to be more than you can handle. Phone call after phone call from school regarding incidence of bullying toward your child has proven to be more than you can handle. Comment after comment from strangers has proven to be more than you can handle. I’m not trying to be melodramatic- I’m just trying to say, life with a neurodivergent child can be absolutely full of life and color and wonder, and it can also be absolutely more than any one person can handle. I’m finding that to be the case for me right now. The depression in my head and the anxiety in my gut are proof that there is more on my plate than I am equipped to handle. I feel like I’m at the bottom of a pit that I can’t climb out of. Or maybe like I’m in the belly of a giant fish… And it’s okay for you to admit the same.

The reality is, God often does give us more than we can handle. He certainly gave Jonah more than he could handle when he had him launched into an unrelenting sea. This is how Jonah described his situation in Jonah 2:

“I called out to the Lord, out of my distress, and He answered me; out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and You heard my voice.  For You cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the flood surrounded me; all Your waves and Your billows passed over me. Then I said, ‘I am driven away from Your sight… The waters closed in over me to take my life; the deep surrounded me; weeds were wrapped about my head at the roots of the mountains.  I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever; When my life was fainting away…” (to be continued)

Notice the language Jonah uses to communicate the hopelessness of his situation. He sees himself to be in the belly of Sheol, which was understood to be the place of the dead, from which there was no escape. He is surrounded, being overwhelmed and passed over by waves, he is being closed in on, and wrapped up by weeds. He is sinking. He is trapped. He has no way out. He is going to drown. Jonah is in way over his head– literally and figuratively. He cannot, on his own, escape the peril that has come his way. In other words, he has found himself in a hopeless situation with no visible, earthly way out. He’s got more trouble than he can handle. Sound familiar?

Now notice that Jonah confidently asserts that it was God who cast him into the deep, and it was God’s waves and billows that passed over him and pushed him under. So yeah, I think we can all agree that God most certainly gave Jonah more than he could handle, and if you are caring for someone with developmental or psychiatric disabilities, He has very likely given you more than you can handle too.

Hopelessness is the Doorway To Hope

All of this may feel like adding insult to injury. Why is God dunking me!? Why does my little girl seem to always get worse and never better, despite constant effort to help her? Why must I go down, down, down to the bottom of the proverbial ocean and feel my life fainting away? Why must I spend my days holding back tears? Why must I live with bricks on my chest and boulders in my belly? Doesn’t God love me? Doesn’t God love her? Doesn’t God love you?

I will never be arrogant enough claim to know all of the reasons that God allows us to suffer and wallow and sink, but I think that the stories of Scripture give us little glimpses into the benevolent purposes of God. I am convinced that the story of Jonah teaches us that God sent Jonah to rock bottom because he loved him. He sent Jonah to rock bottom to teach him where his true hope is to be found, to teach him that “salvation belongs to the Lord” (2:9). Let me try to explain…

“The doorway to hope is hopelessness.” Wait, what? Paul Tripp is known for saying this. All too often, it’s only when we come to the end of ourselves, all of our wisdom and strength exhausted, when everything we have hoped in has failed us, that we seek the rescue that God offers. Of course it is possible to appropriately find our hope in Christ without hitting rock bottom, but sometimes, like Jonah, we need a little shove. Sometimes God gives you more than you can handle so that you have no choice but to depend on his wisdom, strength, love, and mercy. Sometimes hopelessness is the gateway to true hope.

When life starts to be more than we can handle, anything that we have placed our hope in will be exposed. It can be a person (maybe yourself or a therapist?). It can be a place (maybe the right school or church?). It can be a thing (the right medication or strategy?). As the waves get bigger and the winds blow stronger, the object of our hope will either prove to be strong enough to keep us from drowning or it won’t and we will crash even harder. The object of our hope will either come through for us, or it will fail us.

Jonah points out in his prayer from rock bottom where he, and so many others, go astray: Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love. In other words, those who depend on anything other than Yahweh will see their hope put to shame. To trust anything besides Yahweh is to forfeit the firm, loving, merciful foundation we have in Him.

Hopelessness implies that you have been failed by the object(s) of your hope. If our hope is in any one, any place, or any thing but God, it will fail you and it will fail me.  You meet Rock Bottom when life gets nuts and you rely the wisdom and comfort of man, you get to the very end of yourself, and everything you have tried is so helpless to save you that you curl into a ball and give up. Cue Taylor Swift: “It’s me, hi, I’m the problem it’s me…”

Believe it or not, this is a good place to be. It turned out to be a good place for Jonah, and it has turned out to be a good place for me. Because at rock bottom, the only direction to look is up. It turns out, hopelessness is, in fact, the doorway to hope(thanks for this nugget, Paul Tripp, I’m forever in your debt).

He Sees and He Saves

Rock bottom proved to be a turning point for Jonah. It was when he hit the bottom that he remembered the Lord, looked to Him, and offered up a prayer. Let’s look at Jonah 2:6-9:

“I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever; yet you brought up my life from the pit, O Lord my God. When my life was fainting away, I remembered the Lord, and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple. Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love… salvation belongs to the Lord“.

To paraphrase, he is saying “when I got to the bottom of the ocean, when everything else failed me, I remembered the one who could save me, and he did. People who look to things that can’t save them give up the hope of steadfast love that comes from the Lord. The only true rescue comes from the Lord.”

Hopelessness is the doorway to hope. In response to the irreversibility of his horrible situation he remembered the Lord, who saves.  And the Lord saved him.  Simple as that. He didn’t try to swim back up to the top- he knew it was futile. He simply looked to the Lord and expressed his neediness knowing that the Lord saves.

Jonah cried out and God heard him.  We serve a God who hears our prayers.  And sees us where no one else does. No other eyes were on Jonah at the bottom of the ocean.  That was a part of his hopelessness I’m sure, and I’d bet my house that it’s also a part of yours. But God saw Jonah, and God sees you. God kept his eyes on Jonah the whole time, even when Jonah wasn’t keeping his eyes on Him.

In the television series Bones, “F.B.I. Special Agent Seeley Booth teams up with the Jeffersonian’s top anthropologist, Dr. Temperance Brennan, to investigate cases where all that’s left of the victims are their bones” (check it out if you haven’t already, its a fun watch). In one episode, Dr. Brennan gets captured and buried alive in a car with another invididual. She’s a genius, so she’s able to calculate how much time they have before they use up all the oxygen in the car and suffocate. The entire episode shifts back and forth between their peril and F.B.I Special Agent Booth’s desperate efforts to find and rescue them. Eventually Dr. Brennan breaks a window and is able to break through the surface of the ground with just her arm. Booth figures out their location and, because her arm is sticking up, is able to pinpoint exactly where to start digging immediately. They are rescued just in time. At the very end of the episode, Booth asks Brennan what she was thinking when she had just her arm sticking up out of the ground. She responded, “I just put my arm up because I knew you would be looking for me.” She knew any effort to save herself was useless. This was an act of faith in and reliance on another. She put her arm up in full confidence that her rescuer would see her and save her.

This is what Jonah did. He was at the brink of death. He didn’t put an arm up, but he remembered his faithful God who would see and save him and put a prayer up. And God surely saved him.

From the Belly of the Fish

I started this article saying maybe I’m in the belly of a whale. See, after Jonah sent his prayer up and was rescued, he wasn’t actually back on dry ground. Verse 1 states that this entire prayer was made “from the belly of the fish”. Sure, the immediate threat of death was averted and he was saved from drowning, but his circumstances were far from looking up. He was still in the dark and dangerous belly of the fish.  He still faced uncertainty, and he still faced peril.  The stomach acid in the belly of the fish alone would have been enough to kill Jonah slowly and painfully. And it’s not like a candle made it through this ordeal like children’s bibles would have you believe. But Jonah considered his life lifted from the pit before he was delivered from his physical circumstances.  He considered his life lifted from the pit because he was in communion with his God again. His hope was no longer in his plans or his way, but was in God’s presence and steadfast love.

Salvation might not mean full deliverance from trouble, but God does save us from the darkest pit of soul-hopelessness. This has been my experience and my prayer is that by turning to Him over and over again, by His Word and through honest prayer, it will be yours as well. I spent most of 2024 with my back turned toward God, very similar to Jonah in chapter 1. I was suffering and I didn’t want God’s help. I was very confused and very angry.

In early June, I sat in my sunroom with family and confessed my feelings of outrage toward God. I confessed that I couldn’t even begin to process my pain because I thought I would be crushed under the weight of it. And I confessed that I definitely could not hand it to God because He would drop it and that would be the end of my faith. A close family member suggested that if I believed that Scripture is true, I should try. So, I began walking every morning, listening to one Psalm at a time, and then praying. I began telling God every raw and honest thought that I had. These were my prayers from rock bottom. My closeness with God was not immediately restored, I spent a lot of time in day 2, but I kept my arm up, trusting that God saw it and would save me. And He did.

I’m still in the belly of a fish. I’ve still got more than I can handle. I’m starting to panic again if I’m being honest. I feel depressed and anxious and hopeless. But I remember that beautiful, life-sustaining truth: hopelessness is the door way to hope. This time my hopelessness sends my eyes to the Lord, my arm up through the dirt, so to speak. I recall the famous words of Corrie Ten Boom: “there is no pit so deep that God’s love is not deeper still”. I remember the words of Lamentations 3:17-18, and 21-23:

My soul is bereft of peace,
I forgotten what happiness is;
so I say, “my endurance has perished;
so has my hope from the Lord”.

But this I call to mind,
and therefore I have hope:
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;
his mercies never come to and end;
they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.

The author of Lamentations is bereft of peace and happiness and hope. But he makes a choice to remember the truth that God is steadfast in His love and mercy, and so he lifts his arm, an act of hope. By looking to God as my only hope, all of my other helps go back to their rightful and sometimes helpful places. They help when they help, but they don’t devastate when they don’t. Because in this I have hope: “the steadfast love of the lord endures forever”.

Hopelessness is the doorway to hope. This week, I’m working hard to walk through that door. I’m feeling hopeless– I’m once again coming face to face with the reality that I literally cannot fix the problems, shoulder the burdens, and manage the chaos that has been given to me. And because of that I can enter into the incredible hopeful reality that I am met in my need by Jesus. What that will look like? I have no idea, I’m just throwing my arm up in my need. I know He will see and save me.