Guest post by Jill Buteyn

I just love this community. It’s so special to my heart. I write about y’all in Just Show Up. You really are amazing the way you come alongside each other in suffering. So, so many in this group are going through really hard times, yet you continue to cry out in faith to God and encourage one another in love. I’ve seen many comments in this group from those who have lost loved ones, who are fighting cancer or choosing to make good days out of really hard ones. Your determination to cling to God in the midst of hard stuff is not lost on me.

I can admit, and I think we all can, that there are days we just want to throw in the towel. Crawl back in bed and pull the covers over our heads. Some days, I want to call a timeout. But life doesn’t work that way. And even if we do give ourselves a day to vent or whine, the next day we have to get back up and go back into the world. Suffering is not fair. It picks and chooses and strives to destroy. Our world can be pretty overwhelming. And until we get to the joy of heaven, we’ve got a fight on our hands. A fight that says, I choose to do today with faith, with joy, even if I don’t feel it.

I’ve been contemplating this idea for a while, and I’d like your help. I want to put together a list of things YOU do to find grace when you get lost and overwhelmed in the suffering of this world or start drowning in the hard in your life.

Do you go to a certain spot? Have a favorite verse that you yell out loud? What’s your go-to when you need to break out of the cycle of suffering and walk through another day—even when that is the last thing you want to do?

Leave a comment here on the blog or comment on this post on the Mundane Faithfulness Facebook page. I’m going to compile a bunch of the ideas and put together a list and then we’ll post it on the blog for all of us to refer to. (I doubt every single comment can be included, so please have grace with the list.) I imagine with how amazing you all are, we can get a pretty great list going. Then, when we’re stuck and need something, we’ll have all sorts of ideas at our fingertips.

So bring it. How do you fight against the clutches of suffering and look for grace in the hard?