When Life Gives You More Than You Can Handle

Have you ever been going through a hard time and had someone try to console you with the platitude "God will never give you more than you can handle”? When I was in over my head with grief, physical pain, and depression, this phrase felt almost laughable. It was almost funny to me how much I could NOT handle everything that life was throwing at me.

The combined weight of years of chronic pain that had stolen my mobility, the end of a relationship with the person I was planning to marry, and being physically separated from my community due to the Covid19 pandemic certainly felt like more than I could take. I felt totally in over my head, like I was drowning in an ocean of uncertainty and disappointment. I’d wake up in the morning and feel a wave of sadness rushing over me as I remembered all over again the pain of everything I was experiencing. I felt heavy and I felt hopeless. It was more than I could bear and it was crushing me.

As I looked into the phrase “God will never give you more than you can handle” I realized that it’s not actually in the bible at all! People who say this are often thinking about First Corinthians 10:13 which says “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it” (ESV). This verse is not talking about suffering, but about temptation to sin. And personally, I believe that God does allow us to experience more than we can handle when it comes to life’s challenges.

When we experience more than we can handle, it can do one of two things. One, it can drive us to despair. Or two, it can drive us to the arms of the One who can handle it. We cannot choose what suffering we experience or what challenges we will face in life, but we can choose to give our burdens to God rather than trying to shoulder them alone. When our hearts are hurting, this can be easier said than done. So,I want to give a few practical tips for how to choose the way of turning to God instead of the way of turning to bitterness and despair.

One way we can make an active practice of turning to God in our suffering is by expressing our lament to God, letting him in on our honest emotions, our grief, our anger, our fear, our doubt, all of it. This can be done through journaling, prayer, or just simply reading and praying through the biblical Psalms of lament. Some of my favorites include Psalm 22, Psalm 130, and Psalm 6. In some ways it seems easier to just accept that life is hard, to grit our teeth and bear it, rather than to cry out to God with our full selves, admitting our areas of weakness and longing. But when we try to bury our emotions, our hearts become hard. And a hard heart is not God’s will for us. As we turn to God with our lament, we can trust that he will grow us through our suffering and produce good fruit in our lives even in the midst of our struggles.

Another way to turn towards God instead of towards bitterness, is to immerse ourselves in Scripture. You may want to try lectio-divina, a practice of praying through a passage of scripture and really allowing the word of God to soak into you through repeated readings. Another helpful practice might be making truth cards to meditate on throughout the day. Start by making a list of some of the negative thoughts that you are struggling with and then look up scriptural truths that you can stand on when those thoughts arise. For example, when I struggle with thinking “Things will never get better” when it comes to my physical health, I call to mind this excerpt from 2nd Corinthians 4:16-17 “Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison”. You can write the negative thought on the back of an index cart and then write the scriptural truth to combat it on the front.

A third way to turn to God when life gives you more than you can handle is to connect with your community. Let friends and family know what you need, whether it’s meals, prayer, or someone to drive you to an appointment. Chances are, there will be plenty of folks who would love to stand by your side through this season of struggle, but they may not know exactly what kind of help you need. Personally, I am extremely grateful for some go-to prayer warrior friends who I could go to when I was having a particularly rough day with physical or emotional pain. Knowing that my friends were praying for me helped me feel less alone and the process of asking for prayer when I needed it helped people to know how I was doing. It can be tempting to want to burrow into a hole and isolate yourself when you are in pain, but God gives us the gift of community for a reason. Lean into it!

Sometimes in life, we will experience circumstances that are all too much for us. But this is no surprise to the God who loves us. He is big enough to handle all that we cannot. “In this world you will have trouble” says Jesus, “But take heart, I have overcome the world” (Matthew 16:33)