How do I get through the dark moments?

Q. I lost my son earlier this year at eight months. I attended GriefShare in the first few months. Listening to you and David speak helped me get through some of the dark days. I also have several of your books and they have helped me make it this far. My son would have been three years old this week and I have been in a dark place. Any wisdom you can share on how do you get through the dark moments would be helpful.

A. I think we allow ourselves to feel the hurt, release the tears, and we listen to the voices in our heads telling us things and then confront those voices and thoughts with the truth from God's Word. We tell ourselves some very irrational things in those dark times. And those thoughts have to be confronted by the truth. We have to expose the irrational lies in them and challenge ourselves to believe what is true.

I don't think there are quick fixes in the Bible. This means we cannot always expect to open up the Bible and read a few verses in the hard places and expect to immediately feel better. If you have that expectation of the Bible, you will be disappointed again and again. To grasp the hope of the gospel we have to invest ourselves in saturating ourselves in God's Word and wrestling with it a bit, allowing it to challenge our deeply held expectations and understandings. The deeper we go in the Bible, the more understanding of truth we have under our belts to do battle with the lies and misbeliefs that add to our sorrow.