When Your Heart Is Troubled: 3 Scriptures to Settle Your Soul

Where can you turn when your heart is troubled? What do you do when you feel overwhelmed or discouraged? Here are 3 Bible verses to help you find peace…

My heart is troubled.

Aching, really.

And I wish it wasn’t so.

Because I want to walk in faith and not worry so much.

To be unshaken by my present circumstances and undaunted by today’s challenges.

And yet here I am troubled in spirit and unsettled in my soul.

Longing for Home

You probably know that we care for my mother-in-law and that she and Dad have lived with us for the past 17 years.

And how I love her.

And how much she means to me.

And how she suffers from Alzheimer’s and hardly recognizes who we are anymore.

It has become increasingly difficult to care for her – not because we don’t want to –  but because her condition continues to deteriorate.

Among other things, she has this strong impulse to slip out the door and start walking out into the hundreds of empty acres that surround our property. Packing her fuzzy, pink slippers with her as she’s heading off to heaven.

God has called her and so she’s heading Home with her heavenly slippers tucked neatly under her arm. 

And she gets fairly irate when we try and stop her.

Even downright feisty.

I suppose I’d get irate too, if you stood in the way between me and heaven.

Yeah, I think I’d get good and mad and put up a fight.

So, you see, we just don’t know how much longer we can handle her.

Yet I gave her my word.

Several years ago I took her sweet hands into my own and looked into her eyes.

And I promised that we would always take care of her.

Always.

But what do you do when you can’t keep your promise? And what will we do when can no longer keep her here . . . when all she longs for is Home?

What then? 

A Troubled Heart

And you, my friend.

Maybe you don’t have your Mom taking long walks toward Heaven nearly every chance that she gets.

Maybe you’re worried about your marriage.

Or anxious for your children.

Or wondering how it’s possibly going to work out with your finances.

Maybe it’s poor health or difficult relationships or your stressful job.

And it deeply troubles your soul.

So what then? 

Call on the Lord. 

In my distress I called upon the Lord;
    to my God I cried for help.
From His temple He heard my voice,
    and my cry to Him reached His ears. ~ Psalm 18:6

Sometimes we forget that we can call on the Lord Almighty, Creator of the Universe, and we try to solve our problems all on our own. Crazy, to think we could forget such a thing.

And yet we do.

We look to ourselves for the answers, as if we could figure it out. Without Him.

But His Word says that our cries reach His ears. He is listening! He hears us and we can call on Him.

Anytime. Day or night.

So cry out to Him.

Trust in the Lord.

To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul.
 O my God, in you I trust;
     ~ Psalm 25:1-2a

We can have confidence that our God is watching over us. None of this catches Him by surprise. Not our sorrows and not our circumstances.

He is good and kind and powerful.

Put your trust in God and He will not fail you. 

Wait on the Lord.

Wait for the Lord;
    be strong, and let your heart take courage;
    wait for the Lord! ~ Psalm 27:14

Right now. That’s when I want my problem solved. I want to know the solution today.

But Scripture tells us to “wait for the Lord.” Not rush ahead and try solve the issue this very minute. We can quiet our souls, knowing that we are safe and well in His hands.

Wait on the Lord. He is able to deliver you. 

It Is Well With My Soul

Last night, before turning in, I checked on Dad and Mom to see if they were doing alright. I found them sitting there at the kitchen table holding hands and singing their hearts out to old gospel tunes. One right after the other.

Could see Dad with big tears in his eyes. Big sweet tears.

It was one of those rare moments when Mom knew who he was and that he was her faithful, loving husband.

And she knew that their time on earth was growing short.

And they talked about tying a rope to each other, so that when one went . . . the other could follow.

And I wished it was like that.

But it’s not. So here they are, waiting on the Lord.

And if they can do it? So can I.

And so can you.

Call. Trust. Wait. 

Be strong and let your heart take courage. 

In His grace,

*I’d be grateful if you prayed for dear Patricia, if you think about it. And I’d be glad to pray for you too, if you want to leave your request in the comments below.