Bob Pierce once prayed this prayer:
“Let my heart be broken by the things that break the heart of God.”
A couple of times in my life, God has let me glimpse what that feels like. The most recent was on the Walk with Christ at our stake young men’s camp.
At the start of the walk, everyone was asked to write down something they were struggling with. Further into the walk, those struggles were shared anonymously.
As I walked through and read what everyone had written, it broke my heart.
Youth and adults, all sharing their deepest and most private pains.
Standing there in the middle of all that suffering, I got a small glimpse of what God feels as He watches us struggle under the weight of what we carry.
We all carry heavy burdens. And almost all of us carry them in silence.
Henry David Thoreau wrote that “the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” That’s exactly what I was seeing.
Quiet desperation. Heavy burdens, carried alone.
From Desperation to Hope
Later on that walk, we were asked to write what we believed the Savior would say to us. In His voice.
You could feel the shift as you read those words. Desperation and despair turned into hope.
The burdens didn’t disappear. But we were no longer carrying them alone.
I think it’s human nature in moments like that to want to reach out and fix things. Or maybe that’s just a guy thing.
It took me a couple of days to understand what God was actually teaching us.
The point was never for me to rescue anybody. The point was for each of us to learn where rescue actually comes from.
There is only One who could ever truly say “let me take this from him.” And He did.
“And he shall go forth, suffering pains and afflictions and temptations of every kind… and he will take upon him their infirmities, that his bowels may be filled with mercy, according to the flesh, that he may know according to the flesh how to succor his people according to their infirmities.” (Alma 7:11–12)
He didn’t just suffer for us. He suffered as us. Every quiet desperation, He has already felt.
In His deepest agony, Jesus cried out, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”
The Father withdrew. Not because He abandoned His Son, but because that suffering had to be complete. For you. For me.
Christ went all the way to the bottom of what it feels like to be utterly alone. So He could meet us at the bottom of our toughest times.
There is no place your suffering can take you where He has not already been.
He isn’t waiting on the far side of your trial for you to finish it. He’s in the middle of it with you right now.
From here, I want to share five things God has been trying to teach me since that night at camp.
1. Suffering Is Not a Mistake
Elder Neal A. Maxwell taught:
“Because God loves us there are some particularized challenges that he will deliver to each of us. He will customize the curriculum for each of us in order to teach us the things we most need to know. He will set before us in life what we need, not always what we like.”
He customizes the curriculum. He gives us what we need, not what we like.
So our trial isn’t proof that God forgot us. It might be proof that He knows exactly what we need to learn. And that no easier lesson would have taught it.
We sometimes try to pray our suffering away. Remove it. Shorten it. Give it to somebody else.
How many times have I asked God to cancel the very thing He prepared for me?
The Lord taught me this personally, as a father.
One of my sons was really sick. Suffering, to the point we were afraid for his life. And there was nothing I could do. I prayed and pleaded with God.
Give it to me instead. Let me carry it.
And I heard words I didn’t expect:
“Who are you to take this from him?”
I sat with that for a long time.
If I had taken my son’s suffering, I would have taken something else too. His chance to learn, in his own life, that the Savior is real. That He answers. That He carries what we can’t.
I’m not telling you to stop praying for relief. Christ prayed for the cup to pass. But He finished that prayer: nevertheless, not my will, but thine, be done.
2. Running From the Pain Makes It Worse
Confronting it is how you get through it.
The children of Israel learned this the hard way. They were bitten by fiery serpents and dying.
The Lord told Moses to raise a brass serpent on a pole. Whoever looked at it would live.
Think about what He asked them to do. Look at the very thing that’s killing you. Face it. Don’t run from it.
We know a lot of them chose not to look. And they died.
Nephi tells us why. Because of the simpleness of the way. They wouldn’t look. Maybe that’s an example of the sin of pride.
That brass serpent was a type of Christ lifted up. And the lesson is still true today.
Healing doesn’t come from pretending it doesn’t hurt. It comes from facing the thing that hurts. And then looking up to God.
Jordan Peterson once said:
“It’s difficult to maintain an ethical orientation in the middle of suffering.”
When we hurt, we get short with the people we love. We rationalize. We isolate. We reach for whatever numbs it.
The short version? Hurting people hurt people.
That’s exactly why we need Christ in the middle of our suffering. Not just after it.
3. There Is No Good Where There Is No Evil, So Choose Good
Evil is going to exist in this world until Jesus returns. We don’t get to opt out of that. What we get to choose is who we are in the middle of it.
Augustine said:
“God would not permit evil to exist unless out of it He could draw a greater good.”
Nothing you’re walking through is wasted material in the hands of God.
Your mistakes don’t make you evil. Your sins don’t make you evil.
Some of what was written on that walk was suffering that came to people. Some of it was suffering people believed they’d brought on themselves.
The Savior’s answer to both is the same.
Falling short isn’t a disqualification from His help. It’s the reason He came.
4. You Already Know Who You Are. You Just Forgot.
Almost every struggle written down that day was, underneath it, a question about identity.
Am I enough? Do I belong? Is something wrong with me?
As we learned from Job, that’s what suffering does. It strips away everything we’ve been using to prop up our worth. Health. Success. Relationships. Plans.
And then it asks: when that’s gone, who am I?
If you have no anchor, you’ll face an identity crisis. That’s the real reason suffering breaks some people and shapes others. It isn’t the size of the trial. It’s whether there was anything underneath them when the ground gave way.
There’s an old Hindu legend I love.
It says there was a time when all men were gods. But they abused their divinity so badly that Brahma decided to take it away and hide it where they’d never find it.
Bury it deep in the earth, the lesser gods said. No, man will dig it up. Sink it in the ocean. No, man will learn to dive. Hide it on the highest mountain. No, man will climb every peak on earth.
Finally Brahma said, “We will hide it deep inside man himself. He will search the whole world, but he will never think to look for it there.”
And ever since, the legend says, men have gone up and down the earth. Digging, diving, climbing, searching. For something that was inside them the whole time.
The first chapter of the Bible tells us exactly who we are.
“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him.” (Genesis 1:27)
We aren’t searching for an identity. We already have one. Children of God, created in His image.
You don’t earn that. You don’t achieve it. You can’t perform your way into it. It was true before you knew it, and it’s true on the days you forget it.
President Nelson taught that the most important identities we can claim are these: a child of God, a child of the covenant, and a disciple of Jesus Christ.
And when President Oaks was set apart as our prophet, one of the first things he taught the world was that we’re all children of heavenly parents, called to serve all of God’s children.
That’s the anchor. That’s what holds when the ground gives way.
The tragedy of quiet desperation isn’t that we lack worth. It’s that we go looking for it everywhere except where it’s always been.
5. Contentment Is Peace, Not Settling
I used to think contentment was a bad word. It sounded like giving up. Like a man who’d stopped trying.
But Paul taught:
“I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content… I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.” (Philippians 4:11, 13)
Two things to notice here.
Paul learned it. It wasn’t his natural state.
And he wrote it from prison. When he had nothing.
Contentment isn’t the absence of ambition. It’s peace. And that peace shows up when your identity is no longer up for negotiation. When your worth isn’t riding on the next win, the next paycheck, the next comparison, or the next thing you were sure you needed.
If I’m a son of God, everything else in my life gets built on that foundation. Not in place of it.
Understanding that changes how we show up. For ourselves, and for the people we love.
Bear One Another’s Burdens
Seeing everyone else’s struggles that night made me feel less alone in my own.
I believe that’s how God designed it.
At the waters of Mormon, Alma described the covenant we make at baptism. That we’d bear one another’s burdens, that they may be light. Mourn with those that mourn. Comfort those that stand in need of comfort.
Notice, he didn’t say remove one another’s burdens. He said bear them. Get underneath it with them.
That’s a different job than rescuing. And it’s the one we’re actually called to.
Our job as parents, as leaders, as friends, isn’t to replace the Savior. It’s to point people to His invitation.
Our hearts should break for what breaks God’s heart. But a broken heart is meant to move us to bring people to Jesus. Not to try to be their savior.
The Wrap Up
If you’re watching someone you love struggle right now: love them, walk with them, and trust the Savior enough to let their trial do its work of turning their heart to Him.
If you’re carrying something in silence, don’t pray it away. Look at it. Then look to Him.
He already knows what it is. He’s already felt it. He’s already paid for it. And He’s already there, in the middle of it, with you.
Whatever the Spirit has been telling you as you read this, write it down. Then get on your knees and plead with the Lord to help you actually do something about it.
Because hearing the word is a whole lot easier than acting on it.
I know Jesus lives. I know He suffered as us so He would know how to run to us.
And I know we’re children of God. Which means that on your worst day, in your deepest suffering, the most important thing about you is still true.