How the Psalms Helped in a Time of Pain

By Jessica Brodie

I’m a storyteller and a story lover, so for me, the best parts of the Bibles are the stories of the characters themselves and understanding God’s truths within them. I’ll lap up the saga of Joseph sold by his brothers or Jonah fleeing God’s command any day. But when it came to reading the psalms, they never resonated. David sounded like a petulant child to me, always bemoaning his plight or begging God to level his enemies.

But when my life fell apart, I experienced a season when reading God’s word fell flat, like it used to in the days before I became a voracious Bible reader.

One by one, I tried reading the Gospels, the epistles, the prophets, all the Old Testament tales, but only Job held my heart. When I read the others, it’s as if the words danced around my head, trying to sink in, but my heart and soul couldn’t absorb their full message. Now I understand the Holy Spirit was steering me to the books in the Bible God wanted me to explore, but at the time, I felt bored and unfocused. Nothing drew me in.

One day, struggling through a passage, I found my gaze constantly snagged upward, toward the window. Birds flitted around the feeder, feuding with the squirrels for seed, reminding me of the battle going on within myself.

I sighed, realizing I needed to stop reading and pick something, anything, I could focus on. Something small.

So I read Psalm 1. And, instead of reading it in the translation I usually pick, I decided to shake things up and go with a different one, the New International Version. It didn’t take long to finish, and I found my whole being settled fully on the chapter. My mind was engaged and focused, and the words washed over my shoulders and down my arms like a warm, glorious cloak of cleansing bathwater.

You might be familiar with Psalm 1, which begins, “Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers, but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night” (Psalm 1:1-2 NIV).

Delights in the Lord. Meditates on His law.

Blessed.

I shivered, the Holy Spirit warm and comforting within me.

I’d read it all before, many a time. But that day, something inside me shifted. I remembered how many of the psalms were written as lamentations, by people experiencing strife, agony, loneliness, and separation.

Then and there, I realized the psalms were exactly what I needed to read, what God wanted me to read.

For the next few months, I began a study, highlighting and saving special verses that resonated with me so I could share them with others.

Not only did the practice help me reign in my tumultuous emotions and focus my attention on something small, which was clearly all my brain could absorb at that point in my life, but I learned a few other helpful things in the process. They’re simple things, things I already knew, but I understood them in a new and profound way that helped me immensely.

Here are some of the things I learned:

The psalms get to the core of the human experience: emotion.
The psalmists felt what I felt.
Reading words from another who has been in the pit of despair can bring comfort.
Reading about others’ pain unleashes a new self-awareness about thoughts and feelings I didn’t previously understand.
Reading someone else’s cries of the heart helps me understand how to verbalize my own.
Acknowledging God as sovereign and pleading to Him for help feels good and brings relief.
Sometimes, calling for help is the only thing I can do.
Asking God for help when I’m struggling to wait patiently for a difficult season to pass can make it easier.

These are all little things, but they were exactly what I needed. I’m past this now and able to focus on the Bible again, thankfully. I just reread the Gospel of Luke during Lent, and as I wrote this, I’m about to reread the Gospel of John tomorrow.

If you find yourself in a strange place where what used to work or feel easy doesn’t seem to help anymore, or find yourself struggling to explore the Bible during a tough season, consider reading the psalms or some other Bible book that resonates, even if it’s one you never appreciated before.

And let me know if I can help pray for you. I’d love to hear from you.