Sometimes It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better

• By candidasullivan
• October 16, 2025
• No Comments

Do you ever feel like God has forgotten your prayer—or even you?

I remember being so deep in the pain that I didn’t know how to dig my way out. At night, I would lie awake with pain overwhelming my body, and doubts and fear overwhelming my mind. Sometimes, through the worst of it, I wondered why God wouldn’t help me.

Why wouldn’t He answer my prayers of healing?

For years, I lived with intense pain. I tried to function normally, but I was so tired of fighting every day. I did everything I knew to do to get better, and none of it worked. Some things helped for a while, but the results didn’t last.

I remember telling God I couldn’t take it anymore. I begged Him to help me. It was like a continuous prayer. As I struggled, every day I prayed and hoped that He would answer me. I thought things couldn’t get any worse—yet that night they did. But looking back, I see now that was the doorway to my miracle.

The night I fell and entered an ever greater realm of pain, I didn’t feel like an answered prayer, but it was.

Sometimes it gets worse before it gets better.

For months, I endured pain beyond what I thought I could handle. That trial tested my faith and uncovered a deeper part of myself that I didn’t know existed. I endured months of pain without any relief. I didn’t even take a Tylenol. It was a continuous pain cycle. And with the constant pain came continuous prayers.

I know this might be hard to hear, but sometimes it takes pain to make us pray and believe as we need to.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t pray really well when everything is okay in my life. I get stuck in comfort and don’t feel the urgent need to pray.

But when God shakes up our lives and turns things upside down, the things of the world no longer matter. We crave God with a more profound desire. Our prayers become deep and urgent. And all we want is the comfort of the Lord.

Here’s the contrast I’ve noticed in my own life:

• In comfort → complacency, routine prayers
• In hardship → urgency, surrender, deeper connection with God

I was in this place nine years ago. God allowed me to fall and hurt my elbow so I could get an appointment with a specialist. The elbow specialist was also a hand specialist. As he told me he could give me a thumb on my left hand, God clarified the whole situation.

John 9:1-3 KJV
9 And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth.
2 And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?
3 Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.

He reminded me of all the prayers I had prayed for my hands. He reminded me of my pleas that I couldn’t take it anymore. So He made a way for me. God blessed the surgeon to create a thumb for me, and the use of my left hand reduced my pain. I stopped overusing my right side.

Not all pain comes from sin. Sometimes God uses our pain to create miracles.

I never celebrate this day without tears of gratitude for my Lord and the blessing He bestowed on me. It was a gift of love. One, I am so incredibly grateful to have been given.

Now I get to live the majority of my days with little or no pain.

Sweet friend, don’t give up on God. He can make a way for you when there is no way, because He is the way.

What prayer have you nearly given up on that God might be preparing to answer in His perfect way?