Take Heart

Where Do You Find Comfort?

• Amy J Brown, Carrie Holt and Sara Clime • Season 4 • Episode 149

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In this week's podcast episode, "Where Do You Find Comfort," Carrie shares the delicate balance between positive and negative emotions while exploring the need for comfort.  Carrie talks about the emotional journey of special needs parents, explains some essential truths about comfort and discusses the constant place we can go to find it. 

Eps. 149; November 14, 2023

Key Moments: 
[02:33] Lessons from "Inside Out"
[05:07] The Holy Spirit as the Comforter
[08:11] Comfort through other believers
[10:12] Identify the lies we are believing
[12:19] A prayer for comfort

Resources:
Scriptures Mentioned: John 14:16-17a,c, 18; 
II Corinthians 1:3-4; II Corinthians 7:6; 
Psalm 119:76; Ephesians 3:14-19

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Hi there, it's Carrie today, and you're listening to episode 149. This episode is entitled, Where Do You Find Comfort? What brings you comfort? Is it warm fuzzy slippers, a soft blanket, or a cup of coffee? What makes you feel like you're at home? Is it a person or a place? For me, it might be a good book, a journal, and a soft blanket. My family is a place of comfort, the fall colors in Michigan, and the lakes. 

The dictionary defines comfort as: to soothe, console, reassure, bring cheer to, relief and affliction.” This month, we're focusing a little more on the positive emotions we're trying to move toward, from anger and grief to rest or comfort. But we can't talk about this without discussing the opposite negative emotion.

The opposite of comfort is being upset, having worry, aggravation, displeasure, sorrow, and unhappiness. As a special needs or a disability parent, we're often dealing with the opposite of comfort: all of those negative emotions that I just listed, the aggravation, the pain, the sadness. It can sometimes be very difficult to find our solace or relief. Oftentimes, aren't we looking for it in the wrong places: in our phones, social media, food, control, and sometimes even anger and cynicism? We want something or someone to bring us relief quickly in those negative emotions. We want it resolved so we can move on and feel comfortable again. But oftentimes, that's not how life is, is it? When I was preparing for this podcast, it made me think of the Disney movie Inside Out. And if you haven't seen it, there are a couple of spoilers here.

This fascinating animated film looks inside the emotions of three main characters, a mom, dad, and their daughter Riley, alongside their emotions, played out as animated characters characterized as joy, sadness, disgust, fear, and anger. Mom, Dad, and Riley's story is one of change and turmoil. Their family makes a big move from where they lived all their life in Minnesota to California due to the father's job.


Riley has to get comfortable in a new climate, a new school, a new home, new sports teams with new friends in a world that is so much different than what she had known. I feel like we can relate to that so much as special needs parents. The two characters that take center stage are representing the emotions of joy and sadness. These two characters are very opposite of one another. Joy is always cheerful, joyful, and cheery. She's looking at the bright side of life.

Sadness is always sad. In fact, her color is blue. She drags her body around in a slow, very sorrowful manner all the time. The character who represents Joy is ardently striving to keep the emotion of sadness away from Riley and her core memories of her life in Minnesota. As a result, we see Riley stuffing her feelings. But finally, when she's at a breaking point, she decides to run away - back to Minnesota unbeknownst to her parents. Only when the character of joy, this emotion, allows sadness to touch Riley's core memories does she stop the bus driver, run back to her parents, and tell them how she truly feels about the life that they were experiencing. It's only when sadness was allowed to be felt that her parents also opened up about the feelings they were feeling and their thoughts over the move, and then this family finds comfort together. The sadness being allowed to be felt is when comfort comes in. 

The irony of comfort is that we can't necessarily have it without pain. And often, in this special needs journey, they are so closely intertwined that we have them both at the same time. It's never all or nothing. Sometimes, we act like Riley, stuffing our feelings down, trying to bear all the pain on our own. It isn't until we become vulnerable enough to share our pain with God and with others that God's comfort can envelop us like a warm blanket on a cold winter day. 

I love how the original King James Version of Scripture calls the Holy Spirit the Comforter. In John, Jesus is speaking, and He says, “I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, that He may abide with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, for He dwelleth with you and shall be in you. I will not leave you comfortless. I will come to you.”

Later, he tells his disciples in order for the comforter to come, he has to leave. So it's the sorrow of losing Jesus, but then the comfort of the Holy Spirit coming and indwelling inside the disciples who also dwells inside us. I was looking at the original Greek words for that word comfort, especially in that passage of John. And I'm not a Greek scholar. If you've been listening to the podcast for a long time, you know I'm a bit of a word nerd, so bear with me here. That word means paracletos, which means called to one's side, one's aid, an intercessor and a helper.

I love this explanation in the Blue Letter Bible app that says specifically in that passage, “The Holy Spirit is meant to lead us to a deeper knowledge of the gospel truth and give us the divine strength needed to enable us and them, the disciples, to undergo trials and persecutions.”

What is this deeper knowledge of the gospel truth that the Holy Spirit gives us? It's God come near. It's His love for us. It's His redemption as our free gift and the Holy Spirit's power that gives us the strength to face whatever comes our way. But sometimes there's that gap between our head and our heart and us being convinced that God is our Comforter and has given us the strength we need.

What are some truths that we should take away and be convinced of about comfort? First, I love that passage in John where Jesus is telling us that He's giving us a comforter, which is the Holy Spirit. He's going to guide us in truth. He's going to abide with us forever. And not only is He dwelling with us, He's in us. God did not leave us comfortless. 

Secondly, He's the God of all comfort. He should be our primary source of comfort. II Corinthians 1 tells us, “The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and he is the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction.” When we are in pain, sometimes the soil of our hearts becomes really hard, like rain-deprived earth, and we try to quench this thirst for relief in all manner of things. Trust me, I've tried to do it through control, through food, through escape. But God is saying, I'm all you need. I'm the God of all comfort. I want you to run to me. 

The second truth about comfort is that He does bring us comfort through other believers. You might be saying, but Carrie, you just said God is the God of all comfort. And that is true because He's still the source of that comfort through other believers because the Holy Spirit is inside of all of us. II Corinthians also says, “but God who comforts the downcast comforted us by the coming of Titus.” He used other people, Titus in this case, to bring comfort to Paul. He was a place of solace, a place of assurance. Still, the source is God using other people. This means that we are a conduit of comfort to other people. Why do we see so many nonprofits born out of people's pain? This podcast was born out of that because Amy, Sara, and I had a desire to bring courage, comfort, and connection through Take Heart out of our own pain. I'm not advocating that we just go out and do and do and do, as Amy talked about in her podcast in September, the overdoing in order to find an escape from our pain. But scripture is clear that we are comforted with a God that comforts us, and then in turn, we can comfort other people. 

I think sometimes the one reason we struggle to find comfort and connection with other people is because pride is keeping us from revealing our needs to others. Oftentimes, it's the same reason we don't reveal our needs to God. It takes vulnerability and a willingness to live deeper than the shallows of our relationships to share our pain and find those we trust. 

Lastly, Scripture tells us that God's steadfast love is our comfort. Psalm 119.76 says, “Let your steadfast love comfort me according to your promise to your servant.” In our pain, we believe lies about God, ourselves, and others. The biggest lie is that God doesn't really love us, that he's far off when we're in pain. That he’s vindictive that we're just pawns on this earth. We doubt his love. We forget. I'm thoroughly convinced that the more we truly believe, understand, and know God's unconditional love for us in our hearts, the greater and deeper our trust is; the deeper our relationship is with him and other believers, and the greater our comfort. The Holy Spirit is the one who leads us to that deeper knowledge of His love for us. 

If I could urge you toward anything else today, it would be to know that you are loved beyond your wildest imagination. Paul knew how we would doubt God's love, and he wrote in Ephesians 3, saying that he bowed his knees to the Father in heaven, praying for those he was writing to and praying for future believers like us that we would be rooted and grounded in love, and have the strength, (yes, it takes strength) to comprehend the breadth, length, height, and depth of the Father, the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge. It's hard for us to understand it sometimes. It's hard for us to grasp God's love for us, especially in our pain and His love for our children. We feel like no one else will love our children the way we do, but God does. It can take time, dear one, for that knowledge to take root in our hearts, for it to move from head knowledge to heart knowledge. Know that God is continually pursuing you. We see God's pursuit of His people through the Old Testament, and then when Jesus came to earth, His pursuit of us. 

How are you doing at believing that God loves you and desires to be the source of all your comfort, that His steadfast love is a promise to you? Can you identify the lies that are keeping you from believing this? 

In closing today, I want to pray these scriptures over you, the same ones that Paul wrote in Ephesians 3, so that you will know the love of Christ that surpasses all knowledge.

Father, for this reason, I bow my knees before you, from whom every family who is under heaven, who's listening to this podcast today, that according to the riches of your glory, you may grant them to be strengthened with power through your spirit in their inner being, so that Christ may dwell in their hearts through faith and that they being rooted and grounded in love may have the strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that they will be filled with all the fullness of God. Help them to know your comfort, that you are the comforter, and that you did not leave us without your presence and guidance in the truth through the Holy Spirit. In Jesus' name, amen.