You know the days.

You’re laying in bed, wiping stray tears from your cheeks. Willing yourself to get up, but your body won’t budge any more than the crumpled tissues on the floor.

You watched your high hopes get dashed against unforgiving rocks, and your heart shattered right along with them. You know all too well just how much a hope deferred makes the heart sick (Proverbs 13:12).

You’ve felt the sting of betrayal, the hollow ache of emptiness, the question marks left unanswered.

You’ve given everything you had, and it wasn’t enough.

You’ve been punched in the gut, and you’re doubled over from the shock.

You lay there, limp and defeated.

You’re ready to throw in the towel. To say to the world, “You win. I give up. Here I am, waving my white flag. I surrender.”

Before you raise that hand, pause for a moment. Stop and look with me down a different path.

What if, instead of giving up, we chose to give it all up to the One who holds all things in the palm of His hand?

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In her new book, Girl Meets Change: Truths to Carry You Through Life’s Transitions, Kristen Strong writes this:

“The point of our breaking points? They are the perfect place for Christ to come and be what we cannot. They are the perfect place for us to remember we have a Savior who identifies with our weaknesses. He is not unfamiliar with what makes us wring our hands with worry. ‘For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin’ (Heb. 4:15, ESV).

Jesus knows weakness, he’s felt weakness, and he isn’t turned off by our weakness. He looked every weakness in the eye when he hung on the cross. And three days later when his eyes opened wide and his lungs inhaled oxygen, he conquered each and every one. In his own new life, he offers us new life by way of unlimited access to his throne of grace.”

Amen?

What would happen if we took our hurts, and our clenched, battered knuckles — and rather than waving them in fits of rage and disillusionment, we opened them up as an offering instead?

What would happen if, instead of surrendering our efforts as a loss, we surrendered our energy to the Lord, and asked Him to do as He sees fit?

Maybe you feel like you’re being poured out like a drink offering against your will. You’re lying in a puddle of grief and anguish, pain seeping into the hardwood floor.

You just can’t see how your present sufferings could ever be used for good.

Don’t despair.

For in the darkest of nights, that’s when the stars shine the brightest.

“We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed” (2 Corinthians 4:8-9).

“Our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all,” (2 Corinthians 4:17), and “our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us” (Romans 8:18).

For “earth has no sorrow that heaven cannot heal.”

So we take comfort in knowing that this is not the final chapter in our story.

A day is coming when every knee will bow, not in devastation over earthly sorrows, but in worship of the one, true King.

He is Lord over all — even the days when we’re ready to give up.

Go ahead and give it all up — to Him.

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Linking up with Holly Barrett for Testimony Tuesday and Jennifer Dukes Lee for Tell His Story.