To Me

I want to share a story from my life. It happened a long time ago, but it was one of the moments that most deeply revealed to me who God truly is.

There was a season when my father came home drunk almost every night, shouting as soon as he walked through the door. That night was one of those nights.

At the time, I had devoted myself to Scripture and spent entire days reading it. That evening, my mother and I were in our room reading the Word together.

I had been reading through the Book of Job over and over again. As I sat there reading about Job crying out to God in the middle of his suffering, the door suddenly burst open.

My father stumbled into the house, completely drunk, shouting like a man possessed. I heard something slam, then the sound of his fist pounding against the wall as he screamed in rage.

Fear rushed over me.

What if he lost control and attacked us? What if my mother got hurt? What was I supposed to do if things got worse?

And behind the fear came doubt.

What was the point of us reading Scripture like this? Was God only concerned with His grand plans somewhere far away? Did He even see the pain of a small and broken family like ours?

Even while reading Job, I knew those thoughts were strange. Job himself cried out to God from the depths of suffering. Part of me wanted to cry out too.

But no words came. Only doubt.

Still, I clenched my teeth and kept reading.

Until my father finally exhausted himself and collapsed, I held onto the Word almost defiantly — as if to say, What is this Word really? Who are You really? Let’s see whether You endure, or whether I do.

Somewhere in the middle of clinging to Scripture like that, I fell asleep.

The next day, there was a worship service.

Honestly, I did not want to go.

I felt cold toward everything — reading Scripture, worship, all of it. But again, I forced myself to go. I walked into the sanctuary emotionally shattered. I did not want to pray. I did not want to worship.

And then something inside me finally broke.

“Lord, what is this—”

Just as I was about to pour out my frustration, I heard a clear voice in my heart.

“You can come to Me.”

Only a few words.

But in that moment, I immediately understood.

You can cry out to Me. When you are hurting, you can yell, complain, tell Me how hard it is. But your father does not know Me. He is crying out into empty walls with nowhere to bring his pain. The world has become unbearable for him, and he is screaming because of it. I hear him. I know him. But he does not know Me, so he suffers alone. And I want to hold him too.

It was not a voice of rebuke.

It was not accusing me.

There was sorrow in it — a bittersweet grief. A voice that understood my wounded heart, while at the same time loving my father deeply.

And I completely fell apart.

I had hated and feared seeing my father like that, but I had never once stopped to consider how much pain he himself was carrying. To me, he had only been a source of fear and frustration.

But his heart was suffering too.

And God knew it.

He knew my wounded heart, and He knew my father’s pain. And He grieved over both of us.

As I wept uncontrollably in that place of worship, offering my broken heart to Him, I realized something.

When Job finally encountered God at the end of his suffering, it was not that all his pain suddenly became meaningless or disappeared. Nothing had been instantly fixed.

But seeing God changed everything.

That was what happened to me too.

Hearing His voice was enough.

The answer was not the resolution of suffering itself. The answer was Him.

The One who hears our cries. The One who knows our pain.

That was enough.

In that moment, I understood who God is.

He is the One who sees even the smallest corners of my heart and the struggles of a small family like ours. The One who carries love both for me and for my father. The One who grieves most deeply for all the people in this world who suffer alone because they do not know Him.

If anyone reading this is suffering, you can cry to Him.

You do not have to cry out to empty walls.

When life becomes too heavy, you can yell, complain, break down before Him.

He is listening.

And He Himself will become the answer to your life.

Not merely through solutions — but through His very presence.