It's Okay Not to Be Okay: Moving Forward One Day at a Time

by Sheila Walsh

the whole point of my life: to bring

glory to God, to know Him, to allow the Holy Spirit to invade every space. I began t...

but let me tell you this: Christ’s presence was so palpable it was as if I could take His hand. Not only that, there was a peace about the outcome. I wish I could sit down face-to-face with you right now as I write that. It’s easy to write faith statements

when you emerge from a dark tunnel, but I want you to know I had His peace in the not knowing. Christ offers peace in the not-knowing seasons.

The list of Paul’s sufferings is overwhelming, so why does he call it “light and momentary”? I believe he does for two reasons. For one, we look around us. For the second, we look up.

The first reason is that nothing you walk through is wasted with God. He redeems every drop of our suffering.

This is the beauty of brokenness. When we face our losses in the hallway with God and offer the broken pieces to Him, it’s amazing what He will do to bind up the broken pieces in someone else’s life. This is how our brave brother Paul described it: God is our merciful Father and the source of all comfort. He comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others. When they are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us. (2 Cor. 1:3b–4)

The second gift Paul gives us in this letter is to remind us who we are and where we’re going. That is why we never give up. Though our bodies are dying, our spirits are being renewed every day. For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever! So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever. (4:16–18)

Lord, give me eyes to see what I might miss. Give me ears to hear beyond what someone might be saying to what’s happening in their heart. Jesus is the Redeemer in the hallway.

making something lovely out of broken things.

One of my core beliefs is that it’s amazing what God will do with a broken life if you give Him all the pieces.

As a young girl I found my value in what I did for God.

I didn’t understand that God wanted to totally transform the way I thought and therefore how I lived.

Not only that, I didn’t understand that the greatest, most profoundly personal love story ever is the one between God, in Christ, and any man or woman who will come with nothing and accept His everything. That would take me many years along a broken road to begin to understand.

I just didn’t let them get to know who I really was. I hadn’t allowed the love of God to bathe my eyes a second time. Do you remember that story from Mark’s Gospel?

but the glorious truth of the gospel is that Jesus is in love with us right now, even though we are a crazy, mixed-up bunch. He sees us as beautiful.

One of my main passions as a mom from the moment my son was born was to help him distinguish between doing a bad thing and being a bad person.

I gathered him in my arms and assured him that I was quite sure he would! I told him that night what I wish I’d understood at sixteen or even at thirty-six: what he did wasn’t a good thing, but

that didn’t make him a bad person. It made him human. I told him that God loves him as much on the days he feels he’s done everything wrong as He does on the days he feels he’s done everything right. I told him that life will take some unexpected turns, and at times he’ll be devastated, but never to doubt for a moment that God is in control. I told him to stop trying so hard to be perfect and just live, loved.

you. You’ve tried to talk to him, even suggested counseling, but he’s not interested. In your mind, there’s something wrong with you. Or, perhaps you are the one who has lost interest. You wonder how you’ll ever find your way back to the way you felt on your wedding day. You can’t imagine that you used to think it was cute when he dropped his socks right beside the laundry basket instead of in it or left his plates in the sink when it’s only two more steps to the dishwasher. Now everything he does annoys you. Not only that, the passion is gone. When you think about your marriage you feel angry and sad. You believe you’ll never be happy again unless you can get out. I’m a huge fan of the Hallmark Channel at Christmas. I love every snowy movie and every love story even though I know exactly how each one is going to end. I wonder, however, how those romantic tales impact our lives. A steady diet of happy endings, though fictional, can blur our vision. It’s not only darkness that changes what we see. Rose-colored glasses can too. Those

don’t show the hard work that goes into a marriage when it would be much easier to throw in the towel.

They don’t depict the seasons when the only thing that holds you together is the commitment you made to God and to each other, not how you feel when you look across the dinner table. Changing the way you th...

It was my commitment to God and to our son that held my feet to the fire.

The breathtaking truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ is that we are not judged on our failures but on the finished work of Christ.

Clearly that doesn’t mean we get to live any way we like, it simply means that there is always an open door back to the Father when we fall down. That is the heart and passion of this book. It’s okay not to be okay, because Jesus has made us right with God.

He doesn’t love the one who fought for her marriage one bit more than the one who gave up. You’re not an outsider, not second best. If you have placed your trust in Christ, you are a child of God.

See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that

we should be called children of God; and so we are....

We were made for connection and long to know that we matter.

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

Paul’s words to the church in Rome speak clearly to us today: Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world.

When we give our lives to Christ, it becomes clear that some behaviors and customs are no longer in line with the Word of God. So, we may stop doing certain things,

Until we understand that we may live on this earth but we belong to another kingdom, we’ll tidy ourselves up a bit and wonder why we still feel so defeated. Giving our lives to Christ is not like joining a club. It’s a call to a radical new way of thinking and living 24/7—not just on Sunday mornings and when we’re at church.

The word transformed only occurs one time in all four Gospels, and it was a dramatic transformation: Six days later Jesus took Peter and the two brothers, James and John, and led them up a high mountain to be alone. As the men watched, Jesus’ appearance was transformed so that his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as light. (Matt. 17:1–2) The word for transformed here is the Greek word metamorphoo. From that root we get our word metamorphosis. When a beautiful butterfly emerges from a cocoon, the change is total. As the disciples watched that day, Christ’s face shone like the

His clothes white as light. I can’t imagine what that must have been like to see, but do you know that one day you and I will look like that? Christ told His disciples that when He has finally defeated Satan and established a new kingdom and a new earth, “then the righ...

But now, as followers of Christ on this earth, we are called to be transformed internally, which will impact our external behavior. Only an internal transformation will truly change external behavior. Every battle begins in our minds, not with our behavior.

If we want to change how we act, we have to change how we think.

It’s not an issue of judgment, it’s a matter of freedom. Christ wants you to be free. Free from condemning thoughts, free from compulsive behaviors, free to be who you really are, free to live your crazy, beautiful life.

But if anyone ever tells you that you’re not saved unless you follow their rules, run as fast as you can, because that is not the gospel of Jesus Christ.

So, how do we live in the freedom that Christ paid for? We lean into that wisdom from Romans 12—we pursue renewal through the transforming of our minds.

The problem is not a lack of information; it’s a lack of renewal.

it gives me great hope that this process is not something you and I can do by ourselves. We can’t. We need the Holy Spirit.

But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit. (Titus 3:4–5 NIV)

Renewing our minds is a beautiful joint work between our commitment to become more like Christ and the transf...

working ...

Does what I’m doing with my spare time refresh me or am I simply zoning out?

That’s where the choices we make determine whether we’re working with the Holy Spirit or not. Just as we have a Savior who loves us, we have an enemy who hates us. He will do all he can to distract and condemn.

Paul writes this to the church in Corinth: We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. (2 Cor. 10:5 NIV)

I am a child of God. I am loved. I have a future. God is for me.

We’re called to show up!