Struggles

They set off to spend eight days at the space station. The trip lasted nine months. On March 18, 2025, two NASA astronauts who had been in orbit since June, Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, splashed down in calm, azure waters off the coast of the Florida Panhandle, concluding a saga that had captivated the country since last summer.

Ms. Williams and Mr. Wilmore blasted off in June of 2024 for the International Space Station on their test flight of Starliner. This was a Boeing spacecraft that was to provide NASA with another option, outside of SpaceX, to carry astronauts to and from orbit. But the Starliner experienced problems with its propulsion system, prompting NASA to send it back to Earth with no crew aboard.

They had a grateful, patient attitude about the whole experience. “It’s work. It’s fun. It’s been trying at times, no doubt,” Mr. Wilmore said in an interview. “But ‘stranded’? No. ‘Stuck’? No. ‘Abandoned’? No.” Ms. Williams added, “You get a little bit more time to enjoy the view out the window.”

By the end of their journey, Ms. Williams and Mr. Wilmore had traveled nearly 121,347,500 miles, having orbited the earth 4,576 times. Mr. Wilmore has spent a total of 31 hours conducting spacewalks during his career and Ms. Williams 62 hours, a record for a woman astronaut.

Possible Preaching Angles:

Life is like this… unpredictable, with lots of twists and turns and a need for patience. But we can also see the presence of Jesus in never stranding or abandoning us.

In an issue of CT magazine, E.F. Gregory shares the following story of how a persecuted pastor in China prayed for her during the devastating fires in Southern California:

On January 7, 2025, a series of devastating wildfires erupted in the Los Angeles area. As I drove home to Alhambra, strong winds and sirens filled the air, and flames were visible in the mountains. As I drove, strong winds threatened to push my car to the curb. Broken tree branches littered the streets. The Eaton Fire was igniting near Altadena, a suburb north of my location. The community of Altadena would soon be severely affected by the fire.

The Los Angeles wildfires were catastrophic, killing at least 29 people, destroying nearly 17,000 structures, and displacing over 100,000 individuals. The sheer scale of the disaster is overwhelming, making it difficult to know how to respond.

A phone call with Pastor Zhang from eastern China offered a different perspective. While facing persecution and challenges in his ministry, Zhang relies heavily on prayer and a network of believers. When he learned about the fires near my home, he prayed for my family and our community.

Zhang’s thoughtful, empathetic questions surprised me. After all, we were meeting to talk about how he felt to know that Christians outside of China are interceding for his community. Instead, Zhang was remembering and praying for me.

Zhang's empathy was striking, especially given the isolation Chinese Christians often feel from the global Christian community. He emphasized that prayer unites believers across distances and cultures. "We pray for all parts of the world," he said, including the California fires, asking for God's mercy and grace. For Zhang, the fires were an opportunity to connect the struggles of his church with those of mine.

Recent years have been particularly challenging for Chinese Christians due to increased persecution. Zhang said, “In the latter half of the last century, the Chinese church was like an orphan, separated from the family of the universal church.”

Despite these challenges, Zhang believes prayer is a mutual act that strengthens relationships between believers worldwide. Zhang prayed that the disaster in Los Angeles would bring American Christians together to demonstrate God's care for the affected communities.

As we grieve our losses, I’m comforted and humbled to know that the persecuted church is interceding on our behalf. This is why I believe that praying for the church in China is more important than ever. When they suffer, I also suffer. But prayer does not move in only one direction. If I focus only on caring for my Chinese brothers and sisters without allowing them to care for me, we are not in real relationship. We need to pray for one another.

In the 1980s, a research facility called Biosphere 2 built a closed ecosystem to test what it would take to eventually colonize space. Everything was carefully curated and provided for and trees planted inside sprung up and appeared to thrive. Then they began to fall.

The botanists must have looked on in dismay, finding no evidence of disease or mite or weevil. There was nothing to cause the trees to topple; the conditions were perfect. And then they realized what was missing—something so simple, yet absent within the confines of the structure: wind.

The air was too still, too serene—an ease that guaranteed the trees were doomed. It’s the pressure and variation of natural wind that causes the trees to strengthen and their roots to grow. Though the trees of Biosphere 2 had all the sun, soil, and water they needed, in the absence of changing winds they built no resilience, and eventually fell under the weight of their own abundance.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Lent helps us see the trials of life in a new way. Could it be that our difficulties, more than our delights, are what drive us closer to God? Though we may still have a strong aversion to pain, we can see the hand of God when the winds of trial come to buffet, and we can take solace in the fact that our roots are growing deeper. Romans 5:3–5 encourages us: “We also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope….”

Best-selling author Arthur C. Brooks is an expert on happiness research. But he also honestly shares about his own struggle with finding true satisfaction in life:

I have fallen into the trap of believing that success would fulfill me. On my 40th birthday I made a bucket list of things I hoped to do or achieve. They were mainly accomplishments only a wonk could want: writing books and columns about serious subjects, teaching at a top school, traveling to give lectures and speeches, maybe even leading a university or think tank. Whether these were good and noble goals or not, they were my goals, and I imagined that if I hit them, I would be satisfied.

I found that list when I was 48 and realized that I had achieved every item on it. But none of that had brought me the lasting joy I’d envisioned. Each accomplishment thrilled me for a day or a week—maybe a month, never more—and then I reached for the next rung on the ladder.

I’d devoted my life to climbing those rungs. I was still devoting my life to climbing—working 60 to 80 hours a week to accomplish the next thing, all the while terrified of losing the last thing. The costs of that kind of existence are obvious, but it was only when I looked back at my list that I genuinely began to question the benefits—and to think seriously about the path I was walking.

And what about you? Your goals are probably very different from mine, and perhaps your lifestyle is too. But the trap is the same. Everyone has dreams, and they beckon with promises of sweet, lasting satisfaction if you achieve them. But dreams are liars. When they come true, it’s … fine, for a while. And then a new dream appears.

Trinity Evangelical Divinty School professor Kevin Vanhoozer writes about caring for his aging mother in an issue of CT magazine:

For nine years now, I have been watching my mother’s identity slowly fade as memories and capacities switch off, one after another, like lights of a house shutting down for the night. Marriage may be a school of sanctification, as Luther said, but caring for aging parents is its grad school, especially when he or she lives with you and suffers from dementia.

It’s been said that as we become older, we become caricatures of ourselves. Dementia speeds the process. It’s easy to see why: With loss of executive cognitive functioning, we’re less prone to monitor what we say and do. We begin to fly on auto-pilot, re-tracing again and again well-trod paths.

What lies under … the social masks we have carefully constructed? What lies under my mother’s happy face? (“I’m fine,” she’d say, even after a fall). I recently discovered the answer.

Years into the dementia, she lost her last line of defense and began to voice her inmost thoughts aloud. “Father, don’t let me fall” accompanied her every shuffling step behind her walker. Initially I thought this terribly sad—clearly, she wasn’t fine but anxious—yet I eventually found it comforting. The Bible depicts life as a walk: Shouldn’t we all be praying to the Lord to help us avoid missteps? Though she had forgotten former friends and neighbors, and large swaths of her own life, she remembered the fatherhood of God.

Every year, YouVersion announces which Bible verses are the most shared, bookmarked, and highlighted by its users. The list often includes the classics like Jeremiah 29:11 or John 3:16, but this year, the app announced that Philippians 4:6 took the top spot.

The Scripture reads: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.”

Yeah, that checks out for 2024.

YouVersion founder and CEO Bobby Gruenewald believes this verse’s popularity shows that people are regularly turning to God when they face stress and daily struggles.

Gruenewald said, ‘In many cases, our anxiety comes from holding onto worries that we aren’t meant to carry. To me, this verse being sought out the most this year is an illustration that our community is seeking God in prayer and choosing to trust Him to carry their burdens—and we’re seeing that supported in the data.’

There's been a lot of research about stress and here's the bad news: it's really bad for your body and your brain. Dr. Rajita Sinha imaged the brains of 100 participants and found that profoundly stressful events (not the normal, day-to-day kinds of stress) can actually shrink the part of your brain called the prefrontal cortex.

In addition, she and her team found that it’s not individual traumatic events that have the most impact, but the cumulative effect of a lifetime’s worth of stress that might cause the most dramatic changes in brain volume.

That area of the brain helps manage our emotions, impulse control, and personal interactions. Smaller brain volumes in these centers have also been linked to depression and other mood disorders such as anxiety.

Dr. Sinha said, “The brain is plastic, and there are ways to bring back and perhaps reverse some of the effects of stress and rescue the brain somewhat.” Relieving stress through exercise or meditation is an important way to diffuse some of the potentially harmful effects it can have on the brain. Maintaining strong social and emotional relationships can also help, to provide perspective on events of experiences that may be too overwhelming to handle on your own.

So, these overstressed individuals may not be able to "just get over it." They may need large amounts of love, patience, and prayer from their church community.

Suffering and struggles can open the door to discovering true meaning in life. This is what Celine Dion learned after her diagnosis with Stiff Person Syndrome (SPS).

When Dion first discovered her diagnosis, it was a devastating blow. The rare condition, characterized by severe muscle spasms and rigidity, began to take over her life, causing both physical pain and emotional distress. Most significantly, the disease affected her vocal cords. Dion, who is passionate about performing, was forced to cancel performances and take a step back from the public eye, which added to her sense of isolation.

Despite the physical and emotional toll of the illness, she found new purpose in her journey. Dion shared:

No one should suffer alone. A lot of people are going through things alone for many, many, many years. If I would have just stayed secretly behind, my home would have become a prison, and I would have become a prisoner of my own life. Today I live one day at a time. The fact that I found the strength to communicate my condition with the world makes me very proud. Maybe my purpose in this life is to help others, and that is the greatest gift.

A young woman named Trieste Belmont was struggling with depression. Her grandmother had just passed, and she was going through a dramatic break-up. She was teaching a dance class at this time, but without a driver’s license, she relied on a friend to drive her to and from work every week. One day however the friend didn’t show, and Belmont waited for hours before being forced to walk home.

The route she used went over a high bridge. And when she got there, she stopped for a moment. She said:

I was just having one of the worst days of my life. And I was looking down at all the cars, just feeling so useless and like such a burden to everyone in my life that I decided that this was the time and I needed to end my life. I was sobbing and crying and working up the courage to just go through with it, because I knew at that moment that it was going to make everyone’s lives better.

At that moment, a driver, whose face Belmont didn’t see, and whose hand she would never shake, passed over the bridge and hollered out of the window. “Don’t jump,” they said.

It immediately clicked a lightbulb went on in her head; that if a stranger could care enough to speak up, then suicide was not the answer. She enrolled in therapy, and with the help of her friends, family, and therapist, she is far down the road indeed from that dark and fateful day.

Belmont uses the incident as an example to teach others to be kind to people, as it’s never obvious what they’re going through. The smallest kindness is multiplied by the distance, socially, between two strangers.

Controversies abound regarding social media in general and TikTok in particular. And there’s nothing new or novel about older people expressing consternation about the slang terms embraced by younger generations. But there’s a particular convergence of those two trends that have experts especially concerned.

Mental health experts have expressed concerns about the rise of slang terms related to mental health among Gen-Z users on TikTok. Terms like “menty b” (short for mental breakdown) and “grippy sock vacation” (a euphemism for a mental-health-related inpatient hospital stay) are becoming more and more common as more users on the video sharing platform talk more openly about their mental health struggles.

These terms are examples of “algo-speak,” a lexicon of euphemistic terms related to controversial topics that TikTok producers use to prevent automated content moderation systems from downranking their content. In this sense, some mental health professionals applaud the rise of “menty b” and similar variants because speaking more openly on these topics helps to mitigate the stigmas against mental health disclosure. "Saying 'I had a menty b' takes control of the narrative," says therapist Michael Dzwil.

On the other hand, there are some that feel that terms like “menty b” can serve to trivialize serious mental health struggles and prevent people from seeking professional help, opting instead to self-diagnose and seek remedies from other TikTok users.

In Dixon’s conclusion, she recommends users find a balance between pursuing community and finding accurate information. “Wit can't resolve clinical cases alone; treatment necessitates accurate diagnoses and responsive modalities. Pithy phrases make struggles digestible, yet downplay their gravity when inappropriately applied.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

God made us for community so we ought to share our struggles with each other.

Actor Matthew Perry, best known for playing Chandler Bing on the hit TV show Friends, recently died at the age of 54. Perry was cast in Friends, the sitcom that shot him to fame, at age 24. He starred as Chandler for the sitcom's entire 10-season run, a sarcastic yet affable fellow.

According to an obituary on NPR,

[B]ehind the scenes, Perry struggled with addiction. He opened up about his decades-long excessive use of alcohol and pills in his memoir published in 2022, Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing. In the book, which he dedicated to fellow sufferers of addiction, he detailed his painful struggle with drug use and his related health problems: He said he'd spent half of his life in treatment, detoxed an estimated 65 times and underwent 14 surgeries.

Perry estimated that he had spent more than $7 million over 15 rehab stays treating his addictions to drugs and alcohol. While on set, Perry tried to hide his addiction problem, which he said went hand-in-hand with the pressure to get laughs. Perry wrote in his memoir:

I felt like I was gonna die if the live audience didn't laugh, and that's not healthy for sure. But I could sometimes say a line and the audience wouldn't laugh and I would sweat and sometimes go into convulsions. If I didn't get the laugh I was supposed to get I would freak out. I felt that every single night. This pressure left me in a bad place. I also knew of the six people making that show, only one of them was sick.

In 1989 [in Los Angeles], Mother Teresa visited some homeless Latino men living in a church-sponsored shelter program. Mother Teresa expressed the hope that people in Los Angeles would find housing, food, and work for these men.

Someone asked if she realized that it was against the law for American citizens to employ illegal aliens or offer them shelter. Mother Teresa replied, "Is it not breaking the law of God to keep them on the streets?"

A new study found that hospitalizations for pediatric suicidal behavior increased by 163 percent over an 11-year period. According to an article in The New York Times, “The portion of American hospital beds occupied by children with suicidal or self-harming behavior has soared over the course of a decade … The study did not include psychiatric hospitals, or reflect the years of the coronavirus pandemic, suggesting that it is a considerable undercount.”

A doctor quoted in the article lamented, “The hospital ends up being the place you go when all else fails. Could you have nipped it in the bud earlier? That is a systems-of-care problem.” She added, “This is playing itself out in an attention-grabbing way.”

One the study’s co-authors, pointed to “a growing use of social media among children and adolescents and in particular, growing use among younger adolescents,” which she said had been shown to increase symptoms of depression.

Whatever the reason, she added, “we don’t have the magic formula to figure out how to dial this back and make things better.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Note the crying need for the gospel and for the church, especially considering the quote at the end—“we don’t have the magic formula to figure out how to dial this back and make things better.”

Training for a marathon is one of the most physically demanding activities you can willingly put yourself through. And when race day finally comes—after months of training and hours spent pounding the pavement—you want to finish the race strong. But sometimes, that just doesn’t happen.

A runner at the 2023 London Marathon experienced this as he worked his way towards the end of the race. In a short video shared on Reddit, a man in a black cap begins to double over and is on the verge of collapsing as other participants whizz by. But before he falls to the ground, another runner comes from behind him and grabs his arm. He’s able to hold the runner steady enough to keep going. Shortly after, another person appears on the man’s other side. Together, the three runners make their way to the finish line.

It’s unclear if the men knew each prior to the race. But when it comes to marathons, finishing with a fast time is only one component. The camaraderie—knowing thousands of other people are doing the same thing as you—is part of what makes the experience so special. And helping someone in need? Even better. Though the three guys didn’t finish first, they won that day.

You can watch the 16-second video here.

Possible Preaching Angles:

(1) Community, Encouragement, Body of Christ—With our weaknesses and frailties, we all need the support of an encouraging community that will run beside us during the long journey of life. (2) Holy Spirit—This story also beautifully illustrates the presence of the Holy Spirit, the One called to be beside us, our Paraclete.

Shayden Walker didn’t know what was waiting for him on the other side of his neighbor’s doorbell. All he knew was he needed some help. "I was wanting to see if you knew any kids around 11 or 12 maybe,” said Shayden, in footage caught on the neighbor’s doorbell camera. “Cause I need some friends real bad," explaining that he’d been bullied at school.

As it turns out, his neighbors in the Ray family didn’t have any kids his age. But one of them had a TikTok account, where they posted the video of their encounter with Shayden. It went viral, being viewed over six million times.

Shayden’s mother, Krishna Patterson said, "He's been hospitalized because the bullying was so bad and he felt so isolated.” Shayden said, “What my life was like before ... kids were manipulating me and (said) they would be my friend. But when they ask me to do something horrible, I don't feel like they're actually my friend.”

The Rays also set up a GoFundMe account for the boy, where they raised over $40,000, exceeding any expectations they might have had for finding help. Because of such generosity, Shayden will get to purchase some new clothes, a video game system, and tickets to an amusement park.

And Shayden’s mom has advice for anyone else who finds themselves in a similar situation to the Ray’s. “If you see it [bullying], just advocate for that person. Just be there for that person. Do not let that person suffer," said Patterson.

Shayden himself has a message for anyone else who might be considering bullying behavior. “How would you like it if someone were to bully you? How would that make you feel?"

Possible Preaching Angle:

The Lord loves to answer the call of the afflicted, and does not leave the righteous forsaken.

Many of the world’s greatest souls became their best selves not in spite of but because of their distress. The great hymn writer Cowper wrote hopeful hymns and the great artist Van Gogh brushed epic paintings while contemplating suicide. Charles Spurgeon preached some of his best sermons while depressed. Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, and Martin Luther King Jr. battled melancholy. The great composer Beethoven went deaf. C.S. Lewis buried his wife after a short, cancer-ridden marriage. Elie Wiesel and Corrie Ten Boom survived the holocaust. Joni Eareckson Tada lost her ability to walk in a tragic accident. John Perkins endured jail, beatings, and death threats from white supremacists.

As grief expert Elizabeth Kubler Ross famously noted, “The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known one defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation and sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep love and concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.”

In his book Hinge Moments, college president D. Michael Lindsay shares about the birth of his oldest daughter, Elizabeth. They quickly knew something wasn’t quite right with her developmentally. When she was four months old, their pediatrician said, “Well, I don’t know what to say, but something is definitely wrong with your little girl.” Lindsay says, “I found it difficult to breathe. Grief overtook us and made it hard to get out even basic words. We prayed hard that our worst fears wouldn’t live themselves out, but we dreaded they would.”

After three years of tests and specialists, Elizabeth was diagnosed with an extremely rare genetic disorder. She is only one of 500 people or so known cases in the world. There is no cure. It involves profound cognitive disability, legal blindness, and many challenges with internal organs.

Lindsay says that parenting Elisabeth has been what he calls a “heavy joy”—filled with profound challenges but also lots of happy moments. It has also taught him and his wife key lessons about being transformed by Christ. Lindsay writes:

Elizabeth is not drawn to fame or self-advancement. She reflects a more authentic way of Christian living, one that is less interested in appearances or achievement. She takes pleasure in simple things—the taste of vanilla ice cream, the thrill of reaching heights in the backyard swing, the delight of listening to songs with a good beat and familiar melody. And Elizabeth is genuinely happy when she pleases her father, clapping for herself when she hears my affirmations.

Having Elizabeth in our family has helped us see the importance of vulnerability and simple obedience to Christ. More importantly, she has demonstrated that “walking in a manner worthy of the Lord” (Col. 1:10) doesn’t rely on superior [knowledge or performance]. Instead, it is a way of being that opens us up to fully pleasing the Lord in our respective callings.

Suppose you were exploring an unknown glacier in the north of Greenland in the dead of winter. Just as you reach a sheer cliff with a spectacular view of miles and miles of jagged ice and snow covered mountains, a terrible storm breaks in. The wind is so strong that the fear arises that it might blow you and your party right over the cliff. But in the midst of it you discover a cleft in the ice where you can hide. Here you feel secure, but the awesome might of the storm rages on and you watch it with a kind of trembling pleasure as it surges out across the distant glaciers.

At first, there was the fear that this terrible storm and awesome terrain might claim your life. But then you found a refuge and gained the hope that you would be safe. But not everything in the feeling called fear vanished. Only the life-threatening part. There remains the trembling, the awe, the wonder, the feeling that you would never want to tangle with such a storm or be the adversary of such a power.

God’s power is behind the unendurable cold of Arctic storms. Yet he cups his hand around us and says, “Take refuge in my love and let the terrors of my power become the awesome fireworks of your happy night sky.”

In his book Of Boys and Men, researcher Richard Reeves writes, “Men are much more likely to commit suicide than women. This is a worldwide long-standing pattern.” Reeves quotes an article from 2019 in Harper’s Magazine that talked about the sense of purposelessness among modern men. The author of the article states, “Several of my male friends struggled with addiction and depression, or other conditions that could be named, but the more common complaint was something vaguer …. A quiet desperation that, if I were forced to generalize, seemed to stem from a gnawing sense of purposelessness.”

Another study on male suicides tracked the words or phrases that men who have attempted suicide most often used to describe themselves. At the top of the list were two words: useless and worthless.