Rock-Bottom Isn’t the End of Your Story
Most of us want to make it through life with a “clean record,” but very few of us actually do. It can feel like one bad chapter has the power to rewrite your whole story. But rock-bottom moments aren’t the end—they can become the very place you find the strength to move again… if you’re willing to go all the way down.
Admitting you’re at rock bottom feels risky, especially when you’re young. It can feel like you’ll be marked by that failure forever. And while it’s true that sin and mistakes can shrink your impact, they don’t have to define it. Your lowest place can become the starting point of a new trajectory.
No one runs a race without suffering. The question isn’t whether hardship will come—it’s how you’ll face it. Will it take you out, or will it become the place you find the strength to rise again?
I ran 4 marathons in my twenties, and those races helped me understand why the apostle Paul compares a life in Christ to a race, like in 1 Corinthians 9:24 when he says “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it.”
To get the prize in a marathon you have to make it 26.2 miles. My low point in every race was the same: mile 16!! Sixteen miles is a long way to run. By that point I was exhausted. My body hurt. I was wondering why I ever signed up for this in the first place—and then I’d do the math: ten more miles to go!
Mile 16 was my rock bottom on every course. What I did at mile 16 determined how I finished every race.
Some runners just quit.
Some collapsed.
Some slowed to a painful walk.
The runners who finish marathons strong make a decision at their rock bottom: this low point isn’t going to determine the outcome of my race.
Life works the same way. Everyone eventually hits their own mile 16—a season of weakness, failure, pain, or loss. The decision you make at rock-bottom will make or break your race.
The Bible actually describes what can happen in those hard miles. In Romans 5:3–4, the apostle Paul the Apostle writes:
“We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.”
Notice the sequence: Suffering → Endurance → Character → Hope
If you learn to suffer well, even the hardest miles can be a change-point for something good.
IF you learn to suffer well.
I learned some things about rock bottom during my greatest time of suffering. Early in my marriage, I had an affair. That terrible choice set off a season of deep suffering—personally, relationally, spiritually, and professionally. It was entirely my fault. For a long time, I couldn’t move forward because I kept staring at that beginning—trying to explain it, replay it, and punish myself for it. None of that helped me get back up and keep running.
There are three things I learned at my rock bottom that can shift your trajectory and help you find the strength to get back up again. When you’re at rock bottom, you have to…
1. Stop Obsessing About How You Got There
When suffering hits, our instinct is to analyze how in the world this happened to us.
Why did this happen?
Who’s responsible?
Was it my parents? My past? My mistakes?
Sometimes understanding our past helps us heal. But many of us fixate on the whys and get stuck there—circling the beginning of our pain over and over again.
When that happens, two things follow:
We stop moving forward.
We start growing bitter.
What’s striking is that Paul didn’t do this—even when his suffering was clearly unfair.
In Acts of the Apostles 16, Paul freed a slave girl from a demonic spirit. It was an act of compassion. Yet instead of gratitude, he was dragged into the town square, beaten, and thrown into prison.
He could have obsessed over the injustice. But he didn’t.
Years later, while imprisoned again, he wrote to believers in Philippi telling them to rejoice in every circumstance. Paul didn’t fixate on the beginning of his suffering. He trusted that God could still work inside it.
I also learned, at rock bottom, you often can’t control what happens to next. So, just…
2. Stop Trying to Control It
When life starts falling apart, our instinct is to control the damage. We hold on to whatever we can so things don’t collapse completely. We don’t want to fall all the way down. We want to save face or salvage whatever we can. This actually prevents us from finding the gold among the rocks at the bottom!
The Bible has a word for the process of being brought low: humiliation. Not ‘embarrassment’—humiliation literally means being brought down to a low place.
It’s the moment when your strength runs out. It’s allowing yourself to stop controlling it and go all the way down.
Maybe you’re there right now:
A breakup you didn’t expect.
A financial situation you can’t fix.
A job that feels like a dead end.
An addiction you’re finally realizing is real.
We instinctively try to hold things together, but sometimes holding on is exactly what keeps us stuck.
The most powerful move against control is confession—telling the truth about what’s really happening. First confess to God. Then, when needed, directly to others.
I remember the day I prayed a simple prayer: “God, I’m done. Whatever happens, I’m just going to tell the truth.” That moment changed my life.
I confessed to my husband. Answered hard questions. Apologized to people I’d hurt. It felt like it would destroy my entire future. Instead - shockingly - it put me back on the right course!
Letting myself go all the way to the bottom was the very thing that shifted the trajectory and helped me move forward again instead of just trying to hold on tight to whatever was left.
I also learned the pain of low points needs to be allowed to finish its work!
3. Don’t Rush the Hard Part
We live in a culture that wants quick fixes. If something hurts, we solve it immediately. If something is uncomfortable, we escape it as fast as possible. But the transformation described in Romans doesn’t happen instantly.
Suffering produces endurance.
Endurance produces character.
Character produces hope.
You can’t microwave that process even though the temptation is to escape the discomfort before God has finished his work. If you stay with God in the middle of the pain, something deeper will happen.
Paul found this truth in prison. After being beaten and chained, the Bible says he started singing. That seemed strange to me until I was at rock bottom. On one of the hardest days of my life I was alone in my kitchen, convinced everything was over—my marriage, my reputation, my future. I clung to God like my life depended on it—reading Scripture constantly, talking to Him all day, because I had nowhere else to go.
And somehow I found myself singing too!
Why? It was simple:
Jesus was there.
His grace.
His forgiveness.
His presence.
I experience the truth firsthand that God is with us in the suffering. You just have to seek Him and wait long enough in it that you believe it too. When we rush out of it we don’t give ourselves the chance to be found by and comforted by the God who never leaves us!
It was from that place of renewed faith that God began to restore what I thought was permanently broken. I thought he hated me and I found out instead that he wanted to restore me. It wasn’t easy, but after walking with him faithfully, I have seen my marriage rebuilt, my character reshaped and my calling changed completely.
Years later I left my corporate career and stepped into ministry—sharing the good news of a living God who met me and loved me at my lowest point. And gave me the strength and the shift in trajectory I needed to get up again.
Rock bottom became the first chapter of my redemption story - not the last chapter of the life I’d wanted. The very place I thought would end my race was the powerful place I met the God with the power to revise the course and put me on my feet again.
Weakness Won’t End Your Story
It can be so scary to admit fault and weakness because it seems like it will ruin your future.
But the Bible teaches weakness and suffering as the place where God’s power shows up most clearly. Paul once heard Jesus say:
“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
Your mile 16 will come. Everyone’s does. But that moment doesn’t have to end your race. It can be the place you find the grace of God that will produce endurance, character and hope inside you again.