I cannot do anything but cry

GAIL DEVERS is known worldwide as the winner of the 100m at the Barcelona Olympic Games in 1992.

What many don't know is that just one year before taking part she almost lost both feet due to Graves' Disease (thyroid dysfunction), whereby her extremities were covered in blood-filled blisters. She couldn't run at all for two seasons and at times just felt like crying.

Injury is the worst enemy for any sportsperson. Especially when it's bad enough to keep you 'side-lined' for months on end. It seems as if all you can do is cry.

It's not the multiple operations or the physical problems (or perhaps it is), but that situations, difficulties, disappointments - you name it - these make us want to cry.

We feel just like the psalmist who wrote, “My tears have been my food day and night”.

Do you know what? We can have a wrong impression of God. We can think He'll only accept us when everything's hunky-dory or when we come up trumps even when life gives us a hard time. Or that He's only with us when we're 'strong'. How wrong we are!

What is crystal clear from the Bible is that He wants us to be up front with him. God never disciplines his children for feeling discouraged, he doesn't slip away from us when we cry. Quite the opposite in fact.

The Bible says that when the tears come, God is right there with us, trying to get us to see that there is a way ahead and that heartache and suffering are never the end of the road.

Is there something now in your life that is so hard you feel you can't take it any more? Are there people who just don't understand what you're trying to do? Have you given it all you've got and been short-changed?

Remember you can hang out with God and cry. There is not a single friend who can understand you like He can. Not one. Only He can turn things around.

The reason why God is the source of our comfort is so simple that it is easy to forget. He suffered more for us than we will ever be able to take in.

When He took our sadness, our mistakes, our evil, our sin, He knew full well what it meant to be despised and alone. And He did it out of love for us!

God only brings us tears so that we can have the victory. But there's a condition: that we take our crying to God. Then he can bring us the comfort that we need.