Don’t Talk To People About Your Problems, Talk To God

I realized that people have a way of bringing you down even when they’re trying to lift you up. I realized that when you talk to people about what’s bothering you, they don’t try to understand where you’re coming from, they just want to hear their voice. I realized that people don’t always know how to comfort you when you’re crying or when you’re hurting because they simply don’t know the depth of your pain or what’s happening inside you.

But God knows, God understands the words you can’t speak, the feelings that are killing you and the extent of your pain. God knows what you’re hiding and why you’re suffering. God knows what you don’t yet know.

I realized that people will try to tell you how you should feel. They’ll say you’re too emotional or it’s our fault for expecting too much or find a way to blame you for putting yourself through this pain because if you were smarter, if you were wiser, if you were stronger, you wouldn’t have done this, you wouldn’t have put yourself in this situation.

But God doesn’t judge. God listens. God understands. God doesn’t point fingers. God knows what’s in your heart.

I realized that people will say things that don’t make you feel better, like ‘it will happen when you least expect it to,’ or ‘everything happens for a reason,’ or ‘you never know what the future holds.’ But they don’t hold you when you’re crying, they don’t check on you when you go home, they don’t call you to make sure you’re okay and they don’t care past a certain point, past a certain phase, past a certain moment.

But God stays with you when everyone leaves. God is not temporary. God will not say things he doesn’t mean. God gives you time and space to heal before he blesses you. God takes away some things because he’s planning on giving you something more.

I realized that when you talk to people about your problems, they make you feel worse. They make you feel misunderstood, they make you feel like you’re not allowed to be who you are or give in to your emotions. I realized that people only like you when you’re happy and light not when you’re sad and heavy. I realized that people only want you when you’re fun and loud not when you’re down and quiet and I realized that people will only be there for you for a little while before they move on and get sucked back into their own lives.

But God likes you in every state. God loves you anyway. Whether you’re happy or sad, whether you’re heavy or light, whether you’re angry or calm and whether you’re strong or weak. God doesn’t discriminate.

He doesn’t like one version of you more than the other. God accepts you. God keeps bringing you closer to him because he wants you to learn that no matter how much people love you, you can’t depend on them to heal you and you can’t depend on them to fix you. Because God is the only healer, he’s the only fixer and maybe all our problems are just different lessons to bring us to this awareness and bring us to this conclusion: God is the only problem solver. God is the solution. 

Rania Naim is a poet and author of the new book All The Words I Should Have Said, available here.