I lost one of my closest friends today. I feel hollowed out, experiencing most of the stages of grief all at once. This person helped me through a hard year and now they are gone. I find myself wondering, next time life throws me a curveball, I won’t be able to give them a call. How will I find encouragement? And now anxiety rears its head. A constant encouraging person for the last decade is now missing.

We all experience grief, loss, depression, and anxiety. Life throws us all curveballs. A verse people often turn to in these times is Jeremiah 29:11. 

“Here’s what Yahweh says to you: ‘I know all about the marvelous destiny I have in store for you, a future planned out in detail. My intention is not to harm you but to surround you with peace and prosperity and to give you a beautiful future, glistening with hope.'”

Jeremiah 29:11 TPT

This verse is true, and God works to use painful circumstances for good. But what do we do in the meantime while we wait on those plans?

Giving some context to this verse, the prophet Jeremiah is writing to the Israelites who had been hauled into exile in Babylon. Jeremiah had warned Israel that if they didn’t shape up and follow God, they would be conquered by Babylon, which is what happened. Many were taken away as slaves. Even though their present circumstances are rough, God promises them a future in verse 11. But in the preceding verse it says that this promised future is 70 years away! 

“I say to you: After Babylon has ruled over you for seventy years, I will show compassion to you and will fulfill my promise of giving you good things, and I will bring you back to your land.”

Jeremiah 29:10 TPT

The Israelite exiles had to wait. And we often must wait for the verse 11 promise. So, what do we do in the meantime?

“Yahweh, the God of Israel, Commander of Angel Armies, says to all the exiles deported from Jerusalem to Babylon: ‘Build houses and settle in the land. Plant gardens and eat their produce. Get married and have children; encourage your sons and daughters to get married and raise families. Flourish in your captivity, for you must increase and not decrease.'”

Jeremiah 29:4-6 TPT

God tells people to plant their gardens, enjoy what they create, and flourish in the hard times.  We need to find and create gardens and find beauty.

It can be hard to do that. There is a term in counseling called “discounting the positive.” This is where a person is so stuck in their sadness and depression that they reject all compliments and positive feedback. They focus on the negative and ignore, dismiss, and explain away the positive. The positive does not stick. How can someone completely miss good things? It isn’t a conscious choice. It is a habit that comes from brain training. If you focus on the negative, you train your brain paths to only recognize the negative. After a while it becomes impossible to even see the good.  You no longer have the brain paths for it. So, if you are in this rut, how do you get out? You must purposely and deliberately “make your gardens” and doing this can create the necessary paths to see the good.

Work hard on noticing positive things to train your brain! The time of Covid was hard on a pastor friend of mine like it was for many churches. To get through it, he committed to taking a daily photo of something pretty in nature and posting it on social media as “God’s beauty for today.” He forced himself to regularly celebrate something amazing in God’s creation. Soon he began noticing more and more. People in his congregation then followed his example. Doing this in my own way, I often ask my kids to think of something they are thankful for before bed.

Your hard circumstance may not be your own fault. In Jeremiah there might have been people who followed God, but the overall punishment fell on everyone. Whatever the reason for your tough time, God has a plan either way whether it is your fault or not, but there might be a period of waiting. What matters is what you do during this waiting time that can form your brain into faith or into discouragement.

In regard to my friend, do I look at the loss and how much I will miss going forward? Or do I look at how blessed I was to have this person in my life for as long as I did? One perspective is a garden, a positive thought where even as I grieve, it can keep me from sinking into a tough pattern. The other thought focuses on the negative, compounding depression.

We need to plant our gardens as we wait, find the blessings, and look hard for God’s fingerprints.

“Keep your thoughts continually fixed on all that is authentic and real, honorable and admirable, beautiful and respectful, pure and holy, merciful and kind. And fasten your thoughts on every glorious work of God, praising him always.”

Philippians 4:8 TPT

I challenge all of us to find something of God’s beauty each day, and see if our brains start changing, and we start noticing the positive, the good things, and God’s fingerprints around us.

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