The God Who Sits With You.
By Ellie Mont
Sometimes you do not need God to explain the pain. You just need Him to sit with you in it.
There is this passage in John 11 where Jesus weeps with Mary and Martha after Lazarus dies. He already knew resurrection was coming. He knew the story would end in life. And still, He cried.
That is what love looks like. God does not rush you out of your grief. He does not tell you to toughen up. He weeps with you. He meets you where you are and holds you until you can stand again.
You might not always feel His presence, but absence does not mean abandonment. Just because you do not hear Him does not mean He stopped speaking. Just because you do not see change does not mean He stopped working. Sometimes silence is where He is closest, quietly holding your hand, breathing with you through every sigh.
When the pain begins to stop, you will start to realize that His presence never left. It carried you through every night you thought would break you.
Isaiah 43:2 says, “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you, and through the rivers, they shall not overflow you.” It does not say you will avoid the deep waters. It says you will never be alone in them.
When You Start to Feel Again.
Pain can numb you. It can make you build walls so thick that even joy struggles to enter. You start protecting yourself from love, from hope, from new beginnings. But healing invites you to feel again, to trust that not every open door will lead to another wound.
When the pain stops, the first thing you notice is color. The world looks alive again. Music sounds like music, not noise. Laughter feels real, not forced. You catch yourself talking to God again, not demanding, not begging, just talking.
It is in these moments that you realize healing is not just recovery. It is resurrection. God does not restore you back to who you were before the pain. He rebuilds you into someone new, someone softer, wiser, stronger, and more dependent on His presence.
That is what Second Corinthians 5:17 means when it says, “If anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation. Old things have passed away. Behold, all things have become new.”
You are not who you were before it hurt. You are who you became through it.
The Story Pain Writes.
Every healed heart carries a story. The scars you bear become testimonies that someone else will need one day. You will meet someone standing in the same storm you once thought would end you, and you will know exactly what to say.
That is why the pain stopping does not mean it was wasted. God does not waste anything. Every tear, every prayer, every silent night becomes part of the redemption story He is writing through you.
Think of Joseph. Betrayed, imprisoned, and forgotten, yet every step led him closer to purpose. When he finally stood before his brothers in Genesis 50:20, he said, “You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good.”
That is what God does. He turns pain into purpose, ashes into beauty, and endings into beginnings. When you let Him into the ache, He rewrites what broke you into something beautiful.
You will not understand it while you are in it. But one day you will look back and realize that the pain that once screamed the loudest is the same place where His love spoke the clearest.
The Peace That Stays.
Eventually, there comes a morning when you realize the pain is no longer the loudest voice. It is still there, but it no longer rules you. Peace begins to take up more space. You stop replaying what hurt you and start noticing what is healing you.
That is when you know you have made it through.
Peace is not the absence of pain. It is the presence of God in the middle of it. It is when you no longer need everything to make sense to feel safe. It is when your hope is not in the outcome but in the One who stayed with you through the storm.
Philippians 4:7 says, “The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.”
That peace does not always explain itself. It simply arrives. It covers you like a blanket after a long night. It sits with you while the world keeps spinning and reminds you that you made it. You are still standing. You are still loved.
When the pain stops, it does not mean life is perfect. It means you are learning to live again without fear that you will shatter. It means you have tasted grace so deeply that even the memory of hurt feels like evidence of survival.
A New Kind of Strength.
The pain stopping does not mean you are weak for how long it took. It means you endured. You showed up. You trusted God when it did not make sense. That is strength, the quiet kind that heaven celebrates.
Isaiah 61:3 says He gives beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, and the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. You are living proof of that promise.
There is a holiness that only comes from walking through fire and finding Him there. You start to see that your story was never just about suffering. It was about redemption. About the kind of strength that does not boast but kneels.
You realize that the stopping of pain is not simply the silence of suffering. It is the sound of peace. It is the hum of a healed soul learning to breathe again.
Reflection Questions
1. What pain has God been gently softening in your heart, even if you do not see it fully healed yet?
2. How have you noticed His presence in your waiting?
3. What has your pain taught you about compassion, endurance, or grace?
4. How might your healing story give hope to someone else?
5. In what small ways is peace already showing up in your life today?
Prayer: Heavenly Father thank You for never leaving me, even when my heart was too heavy to believe You were near. Thank You for sitting with me in the silence and for holding what I could not put into words. I give You every ache that still lingers and every scar that still stings. Teach me to trust the slowness of Your healing. Help me see that peace is not about everything being fixed but about knowing You are still here. When the pain stops, let it not be because I escaped it, but because I found You in it. Make my story one that carries hope to others who are still waiting for their dawn. In Jesus’ Name, amen.