The Room I Couldn't Unlock: How God is An Ever-Present Help in Chronic Pain
On a breezy Monday afternoon in May, I found myself locked in my daughter’s bedroom. The details of how this came to be are not suited for publication. What you must know is it started as these situations usually do: a three-year-old screeching at the top of her lungs. Somehow, her tantrum silenced the second she realized her fate: trapped in the room with me and no key, no makeshift key (I tried to no avail), no phone to call for help, and no rescuer in sight.
“It’s okay,” I assured her and myself. “Mommy’s got this.” Wrong. “There are plenty of things in this room that can pick this lock,” I thought. Wrong again. I straightened a key ring—freshly twisted off a pop fidget toy. It was too flimsy to pick the lock.
Panic briefly set in. “There are two kids out there who need me,” I said out loud to no one in particular. I yelled for my oldest. Silence. I yelled again. How is it that the one day I need her, she actually sleeps at nap time?
“God give me an idea,” I prayed. The window. Of course. I looked out and around, sifting through ideas of walking on the roof and jumping down to the first floor. Imagine it—me, lying on the ground, broken in half, waiting for help. No thanks. Instead, I opened the window and waited for someone—anyone—to walk by. Our road is usually walked, but apparently not at this hour, on this day
I sat on the floor beside the window, arms on the sill, and listened to the sound of my own helplessness. There was no new idea, nothing left to try. There was only waiting in the company of me and my angry thoughts firing at God. An hour and a half later, my oldest unlocked and opened the door. A sight for sore eyes, a knight in shining armor—my curly-haired girl in her princess jammies.
Sitting at the window that day mirrored what life has felt like recently—trapped in a room I cannot unlock, asking for direction that doesn’t come.
A Year of Chronic Pain
June marks one year of experiencing daily pain. In December, a spine specialist told me that it will take some time for trial and error to figure out the right combination of physical therapy, chiropractic care, spinal injections, and possibly surgery. Now, I am six months post-conversation, still trudging through, still asking God (and specialists) for help and healing.
Over these same months, I witnessed a friend receive two heartbreaking “not yet’s” from God in a journey she’s walked for over a decade. Processing her story while carrying my own left me asking the haunting question: Is God really saying “not yet”, or is He saying “not ever”?
I realized that having an impenetrable theology of suffering is great until my own heart becomes the testing ground. In suffering, I’m left to reconcile my pain with the truth of God’s character, which brought anger and confusion. I felt like all the nuts and bolts holding my faith together suddenly loosened. And because prayer is, for me, what tightens my faith, I felt like I’d forgotten how to pray.
In my disorientation, God used other people to keep me tethered to the truth. Over and over again, my friends brought me back to Psalm 46:1: “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.”
“But this doesn’t feel like help. It feels like He isn’t answering,” I’d push back. “What does ever-present help even mean?” I’d ask, exasperated. I didn’t understand. Yet as I shared the story of the locked-room with my friends, and my impending existential crisis, they poured truth into my soul.
When God’s Answer Doesn’t Feel Like Help
If God is an ever-present help in times of trouble, but He is not providing the help that I think I need, then maybe what I think I need is not really what I need at all. Being locked in that bedroom revealed this truth.
When I shared the story with a friend, she looked me dead in the eyes and said, “So, you’re telling me that while you were locked in the room, your other kids were asleep? And they stayed asleep the whole time you were in that room? And as soon as they woke up, you were freed from that room?”
Then she gave me the look that only a friend can give—one that asks if you even hear yourself. THE AUDACITY. But she was right: God granted me freedom from that room in the exact moment I needed it and not a second before. I didn’t need to get out any sooner than I did—my kids were perfectly attended to in their slumber. The truth is that I just wanted to be free.
How many times have I asked God to change my circumstances before I asked Him for help in my circumstances? God could remove all of my pain in an instant, but hasn’t. After being locked in that room, I wonder if it’s because what He is redeeming in my circumstances is more valuable than my comfort.
What Does Ever-Present Help Actually Mean?
Sometimes God changes our circumstances. Other times, He sustains us within them.
More than six weeks of daily pain changes a person’s brain, a physical therapist told me. That explains the mental battle the last year offered. The darkest days were the ones where hope felt like it was slipping away entirely.
The first thing I learned to let go of was the need for answers. If I could just find the cause of the pain, I’d know how to treat it. But the search for answers was disorienting. Every provider had a different opinion. I felt like I was in a pinball machine, bouncing from one bank to another. I finally realized the only one who fully understands my body is the One who created it. Where specialists were guessing, my Father knew, and He knows the path to healing. I asked Him to give me peace about which treatment to pursue, and He did. But every time I let other voices in, that peace wavered.
As the year wore on and the pain worsened, I noticed something: difficult behavior days in our home aligned with bad pain days. The constant physical stimulation in my hip made it harder to regulate my own emotions and model regulation to my children. Anger I thought had softened in me began to resurface. I learned to ask the Holy Spirit for patience I didn’t have. And on days when I invited Him in, He gave it generously.
There were moments when I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of medical appointments. I wanted to give up. The pain worked its way to the center of my life, and I hated it. I longed for freedom. I was tired of thinking about it. Talking about it became a chore. I rehearsed with Brandon the night before appointments in fear that I’d go mute from overwhelm. I learned to ask God for words and for providers who wouldn’t rush me through them. He answered.
I thought I knew prayer. But here’s a gold nugget I’ve had to accept: life is as series of new experiences—each one requiring me to trust God all over again, each one requiring me to learn how to pray all over again.
As I learned to pray specific, bite-sized prayers in chronic pain, the walls around my heart began to erode. Slowly, the character of God came into focus:
He is my witness. The same God that Hagar calls “The God Who Sees Me,” sees me (see Genesis 16:13). He sees what is invisible to everyone else.
He is my companion. He promised to never leave me or forsake me (see Deuteronomy 31:6). He was with me in the locked room and in every appointment. He counted my tears on the nights I cried through home exercises (see Psalm 56:8). He is the nearest friend when the pain feels lonely.
He is my intercessor. When hope slipped away, He held it for me. Romans 8:26 reminds me that the Spirit helps in my weakness, interceding when I don’t know how to pray. No need to panic.
What I’m Holding Onto
The more I think about God’s presence in my suffering, the more I think of Paul and the thorn in his flesh. Three times he pleaded for it to be removed (see 2 Corinthians 12:7-8). Instead of healing him, God said, “my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (see verse 9). I used to think that the miracle here was the power given. Now I wonder if the miracle is the weakness itself because it’s the very thing that kept drawing Paul back to Christ. I wouldn’t have chosen this pain, but I can see how God is using it to draw me nearer.
The thought of never being fully free from this pain catches in my throat. I’ve often wondered why Paul only pleaded three times. Did he stop because God answered him? If I heard God as clearly as he did, I hope I would accept it too. Until then, I will keep pleading, and I’ll keep trusting that He is my refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble (Psalm 46:1)
Even as I write this, my heart is still learning. Do I actually believe this? I ask myself after hitting the space bar. There is a daily temptation to forget the ways God has already sustained me. So I write this as an Ebenezer stone—a reminder of God’s faithfulness: who He is, who He will always be, and the truth I’m still learning to trust—that His presence is enough.
