How To Have Faith When You’re Going Through Hell

Dawn Stergin
4 min readNov 9, 2021
Photo by Chris Buckwald on Unsplash

There is a saying that if you are going through Hell, keep going. This is a very practical solution for getting through tough times. If you keep putting one foot in front of the other you will eventually get to the other side of your difficulties. But how else can we deal with the pain of living with misfortune? How do we know for sure things will get better?

The first and most important realization you must make is that there is a spiritual lesson in EVERYTHING that happens in life. Once we take our eyes off of all the terrible details, we open our minds to see the possible gift and learn something we would otherwise never be able to learn. Some teachings can only be gotten through pain. Elizabeth Viorst wrote a book called “Necessary Losses”. In her book, Elizabeth talks about how we gain maturity and wisdom through our pain and losses. Expecting life to always be easy and to never suffer a loss is unrealistic and childish. Once we accept that we will experience loss and pain, these things become easier to handle. We cannot grow and learn without hardship. Eventually, you can become so skilled at seeing the lesson in the disturbance it becomes akin to catching a fastball. It will sting your hand a bit when it hits your glove, but you caught it. Developing this level of emotional skill is maturity. Receiving the lessons will add to your sense of purpose in…

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Dawn Stergin

Former addictions counselor, empty-nester, activist, animal lover, writer and lover of what it means to be human.