This Too Shall Pass — and It Already Has

When life knocks you down, four simple words can become your lifeline.

There are truths we learn from books, some from our fathers, and some only after life has knocked us flat and emptied our pockets.

“This too shall pass” belongs to the last category.

I’m not sure where I first heard it. Maybe someone told me. Maybe pain invented it for me. Either way, it’s not poetic. It lacks the thunder of Scripture or the elegance of a Latin proverb. You could stitch it on a pillow, slap it under a sunset photo, or see it in a feed from someone whose biggest crisis is cold coffee.

Yet when real suffering hits, regardless of its form; when it’s raw, relentless, and beyond your control, those four ordinary words become a rope. Not a ladder out. A rope to hold onto so you don’t drown.

It Has Carried Me Through

I’ve repeated it through physical agony, shredded relationships, betrayals at work, and the quiet grief no one sees. As a man, this felt especially humiliating. We’re wired to fix things. We love tools, plans, measurements, and problems with visible screws. Give us duct tape, time, and a hardware store run (or three), and we’re happy.

Suffering rarely cooperates. There’s no instruction manual for 3 a.m. when your mind broadcasts every disaster like morning news. So we grip tighter. We build contingency plans for our contingency plans. We rehearse conversations that will never happen. We try to carry our families, our futures, and the whole universe on our backs.

Then we are surprised when our knees buckle.

“This too shall pass” doesn’t shame that instinct. It simply reminds us: You were never carrying the universe. You only thought you were.

Not Defeat; Proportion

At first glance, the phrase “This to shall pass” can sound passive. Almost fatalistic. Like shrugging while the roof caves in.

That’s not it.

“This too shall pass” is an acceptance of proportion. The crisis towering over you is not God. The pain is real, but not eternal. The humiliation burns, but it doesn’t get the final word. Even death, the fear behind all fears, has been answered.

It’s a gentle memento mori. Remember you will die. Remember also that this moment will die. The crisis that consumes your thoughts today will one day be a story you tell, a scar you carry, a name you no longer mention, or perhaps something you barely remember.

You’ve already lived through nights you thought would never end. They passed. And so did you. You have already lived through nights you thought would never end. At the time, they felt permanent. They were not. They passed, and you remained.

The River, Not the Wall

The subtitle, “and It Already Has.” matters.

Whatever you are enduring now has already begun to pass.

The moment you started this sentence is gone. The breath you just took has been released. The worst hour of yesterday is history. Even if the pain lingers, it is never exactly the same pain in exactly the same moment.

Suffering often feels like an immovable wall. It is more like a river; deep, violent, dragging us across rocks. But it moves.

Time doesn’t heal every wound neatly. Some losses stay with us. But time changes everything. The pain that once filled the entire house gradually retreats to one room. It may still live there. It may still fling the door open uninvited. But it no longer owns the property.

Some wounds do not close so much as become part of the person we are becoming. This is not because we became stronger than suffering. It is often because suffering taught us, without our knowledge, that strength was not what we thought it was.

Strength is not always standing tall. Strength is choosing to kneel. Sometimes it is asking for help. Strength can be allowing another to see your fear. Sometimes it is remaining faithful when you feel nothing. And often, strength is getting out of bed, putting on your boots, and doing the next necessary thing while heaven appears silent.

The Great Lie of Control

Much of our suffering is intensified by the belief that we should be able to control it. We control remarkably little, though this has never stopped us from pretending otherwise.

We control neither the hour of our birth nor the hour of our death. We do not command our hearts to keep beating. We do not order the sun to rise. We cannot guarantee the choices of our children, the loyalty of our friends, the health of our bodies, the success of our work, or the behavior of the person in the passing lane who has apparently decided that fifty-two miles per hour is an act of civic virtue!

We control our choices, though even those are shaped by weakness, habit, fear, grace, temptation, history, and circumstances we did not choose. This should terrify us.

Instead, properly understood, it can set us free.

The belief that we control everything is not power. It is bondage. It makes us responsible for outcomes that were never ours to command. It convinces us that if we worry long enough, plan hard enough, or endure intensely enough, we can force reality to obey.

Letting go of the illusion doesn’t mean abandoning responsibility. Plant the field. Mend the fence. Protect your family. Keep your promises. Show up. Pray. Take your medicine.

But stop pretending the harvest is yours to command.

True Comfort Can’t Be Seized

We often think comfort is something we can manufacture or purchase.

We reach for food, drink, distraction, entertainment, work, anger, lust, shopping, applause, or endless scrolling through the lives of people who seem happier than we are.

Some comforts are innocent. A hot meal, a good chair, an old movie, a glass shared with a friend, or the simple pleasure of taking off work boots after a long day can all be gifts. But gifts become idols when we demand that they save us.

Real comfort is received, not grabbed. In the Christian tradition, it’s the promise that pain can be accompanied, offered, transformed, and ultimately redeemed. Christ doesn’t always remove the cross. He gets beneath it with us.

Prayer Inside the Pain

In my darkest stretches, I have prayed, and suggested to others, a simple offering:

“I offer my suffering for my sins, the sins of my family, and the sins of the whole world.”

It is not magic. It does not always reduce the pain, but often it does take the edge off. It may not produce immediate peace, bright lights, spiritual warmth, or any other sign that heaven has received the message.

Sometimes it is prayed through clenched teeth. Sometimes it is repeated because no other prayer can be formed. Sometimes it is less an act of devotion than an act of desperate surrender. But surrender offered to God is still prayer.

The words change the question. Instead of asking only, “How do I escape this?” we begin asking, “How can this be given?”

Instead of pain remaining meaningless, private, and enclosed, it becomes an offering. Regardless of its cause, I am no longer merely passive before it. I can acknowledge what I cannot control, choose how I will bear it, and offer it to God. In doing so, my suffering gains a purpose beyond itself.

The suffering may still be terrible. Christianity does not require us to call evil good or agony pleasant. Christ Himself asked that the cup pass from Him. But He also said, “Not my will, but yours be done.”

There is the center of it: not defeat, but trust; not resignation, but obedience; not despair, but love willing to remain present even when deliverance is not guaranteed.

Scars and Glory

There is a famous line from Shane Falco, the fictional quarterback in The Replacements:

“Pain heals. Chicks dig scars. Glory lasts forever.”

Ridiculous? A bit. But, in its own cheerfully masculine way, not entirely wrong!

Pain does heal, though sometimes badly and incompletely. Scars tell stories, though the stories are not always suitable for dinner conversation. And real glory does last, though it belongs to God, not old highlight reels.

The Christian life does not promise that we will avoid scars.

Christ rose with His wounds. That should tell us something. His wounds no longer bled or bound Him, but they remained; transformed into signs of victory. God often uses suffering to shape us into people we could never become without it.

That does not mean every suffering was sent directly by God. Much of what wounds us comes from sin, disorder, disease, human freedom, and the brokenness of the world. But God wastes nothing surrendered to Him. Grace is not bound by our timelines.

Smallness Is Not Worthlessness

The modern world screams: Get bigger. Build your brand. Expand your influence. Control your future. Manifest your destiny. Optimize everything. Monetize your hobbies. Track your sleep. Track your steps. Track your heart rate. Track the package containing the device that tracks the rest of it!

“This too shall pass” tells us something far more merciful: You are small.

And that’s okay.

Smallness is not worthlessness. A child is small and infinitely precious. A seed is small and contains a forest. The Host is small and contains the King of the universe.

We are not asked to be omnipotent. That position is filled. Our smallness allows us to stop auditioning for God’s role.

We do not have to understand everything. We do not have to fix everyone. We do not have to foresee every danger. We do not have to carry tomorrow before it arrives.

We are required to be faithful in the portion of time actually given to us.

When the Phrase Isn’t Enough

There are sufferings so severe that “this too shall pass” can sound insulting.

Do not throw the phrase carelessly at the grieving. Do not use it to hurry another person through sorrow. Do not wield it as a spiritual broom to sweep away tears that make you uncomfortable.

Some pain requires silence. Some requires sitting beside those suffering without explanation. Trust me, your silent presence is a comfort. Some pain require meals, medicine, professional help, financial support, physical presence, or simply answering the telephone at two in the morning.

The phrase is most powerful when spoken quietly to oneself.

It is not an argument against grief. It is a refusal to worship grief.

It says: This hurts. This matters. I may carry its mark for the rest of my earthly life. But it is not eternal. God is.

The Man Who Endures

A man is not measured by whether he feels pain and can stand against it. He is measured, in part, by what he does with it.

Does he spread it? Does he become cruel because he was wounded?
Does he punish his wife, children, friends, or employees for battles they did not start?
Does he retreat into bitterness and call it wisdom? Or does he allow suffering to deepen him?

Does it make him more patient with weakness, more attentive to the lonely, less impressed by appearances, less eager to judge, more willing to forgive?

The world has enough wounded men who bleed on everyone around them. We need men who bring their wounds to something, or Someone, greater. Men who can say “I’m hurting” without abandoning their duty. Men who keep showing up.

Men who can stand at the edge of uncertainty and pray: I offer this. Without understanding, desire or control. But I offer it.

It Will Pass

Everything will pass. The body itself will pass. Nothing we have or do will have any lasting effect other than possibly the impact we have on others and the work we do for God.

That truth can sound grim. It is actually an invitation to freedom.

If all of this is passing, we can finally hold it loosely:
Love without clutching.
Work without worshipping success.
Suffer without crowning suffering king.
Live without pretending we control the outcome.
And die without believing death has won.

“This too shall pass” is not a promise that life will become easy. It is a reminder that this life is a proving ground, the forge in which our metal is perfected. Pain is loud but temporary. God is quiet and eternal.

This simple truth has carried me through more surgeries, hospital stays, scars, trauma, and emergencies than I care to recount. It has reminded me, again and again, that pain shouts while God often whispers; but only one of them lasts.

Whatever you are facing, it has already begun to pass. The hour is moving. The wound is becoming a scar. Hold the rope. Say the prayer. Do the next faithful thing.

This too shall pass.
And, even now, it already has.