Feeling worse before better? Discover the ancient path of down before up.
I once saw this very funny cartoon. The first image showed a nice ‘up and to the right’ graph displaying how we think life should work. Progress, easy, smooth, success and without any struggle or challenge.
The next cartoon was more of a mess. The graph line went up and to the right, but it was more up and down, back and forward and actually a squiggly mess.
There is the expectation, and then there is the reality.
We laugh because we know it’s true. For every up there will be a down. For every seeming gain in life, there will most likely be a multitude of failures.
It’s a case of letting go, or an emptying of ourselves before we can receive.
A death before a new life.
An ancient path of detachment to the old so that a new attachment can be created to something better.
Why Do I Feel Worse Before I Feel Better?
I was talking with someone recently whose life was finally starting to move up. Relationships mending. Fog lifting. Things sorting themselves out. The path was beginning to look clearer.
But we both knew full well that it hadn’t always been like this. The last few years had mostly been down — into depression, anxiety, despair, and simply feeling lost. Mostly in this time there was a shedding of old ways of thinking and believing about how life worked and where God was in all of it.
But there was a question sitting underneath our conversation. Is this upward turn, this feeling of things getting better, going to continue in a straight, tidy line now?
We both knew the answer. No. It won’t. This kind of up-and-down movement is what recovery from a mental health breakdown actually looks like — millimetre steps forward, sideways, and sometimes what feels like backward.
Down Before Up: Bible Stories About Hitting Rock Bottom
Throughout the Bible are stories of people, just like you and I, who went down before they went up.
- Peter went down — denying he even knew Jesus in the very moment Jesus needed his loyalty.
- Saul went down — on the way to Damascus to terrorise the early church, he was struck to the ground. He rose from the ground as Paul. A new man, but with a thorn in his flesh.
- Naomi went down — into a long grief, so much so that she told people to call her Mara, which means bitter, but eventually she held an unexpected grandchild from which the lineage of Jesus came.
I’m so glad the Bible includes stories of people like us. Warts and all. Dark hole dwellers like Job and gossips like Miriam.
It is the story of an ancient path.
Psalm 23 has a dark valley as well as still waters and green pastures.
Maybe the dark valley part of the ancient path isn’t a sign that you’ve left the path. It might actually be saying that you are actually on it, and to persevere. If that valley has started to feel less like a passage and more like a tomb, it helps to understand the difference between a suffocating despair and a valley you can walk through.
And if it’s grief, a loss of what was, the slow, non-linear dance of grief follows this same down-before-up shape.
Sometimes rock bottom is also the place where we finally come to our senses, the way the prodigal son did in the pig field before he found his way home.
Learn, Unlearn, Relearn
Those dark valleys, those places of facing yourself in all truthfulness, are times I believe where we examine what we have learned.
You have learned up until that point that life runs a certain way. That God is like this or that.
At this growth point there is an invitation to unlearn some of the ways of doing things. Some of our old ways of thinking and behaving no longer serve the new you God is wanting to form.
Then it’s time to relearn. Something truer and deeper forms. A new pathway of understanding invites us down.
The old path loses its attraction, and as we venture up, the old drops away. Millimetres of learning become metres.
You can’t relearn what you haven’t first unlearned. And you can’t unlearn without going down.
How Do We Keep Going?
- Don’t go alone — we would rather go it alone. Not let anyone else into our world, but there is wisdom in not travelling alone. You might just get overwhelmed by the monsters you find. Find someone who has possibly been on this path before. It might be a friend, therapist, spiritual director, or even myself.
- Keep records — I look back at my journals from time to time and see where I was then and where I am now. I see the process through the ‘Learn, unlearn, relearn’ squiggly mess. It helps. It gives me hope.
- Rehearse the truth — I like to have a thinking compass for my ancient path. This has little reminders of millimetre steps. Little phrases and truth coaches that I need to rehearse over and over again into my thinking.
Ancient paths go up and down. They are never straightforward and easy, but you’re not alone, so let’s keep taking the ancient path footsteps.
Quotes to Consider
Further Reading
- The Ancient Path: Why the Narrow Way Is Still the Right One — There’s an ancient path — one worn into the ground over thousands of years, easy to trust because so many have walked it before you.
- When the Darkest of Valleys becomes a Suffocating Despair — The darkest valley can become a suffocating tomb, but with the help of others, a step can be made, and light can shine again.
- Psalm 23: How the Good Shepherd Prepares a Safe Tableland for You — Feel anxious about the future? Discover how the Good Shepherd prepares a “tableland” of safety and provision for you, even in messy seasons.
- The Inner Groan: Why Do I Feel So Broken Inside? — Feeling broken inside? Discover the birth pangs metaphor from Romans 8 and find hope in the sacred waiting between now and not yet.
- The Slow Dance of Grief: Passing Through What Was — Grief is the full-body experience of processing what was. Explore how to navigate loss, the stages of grief, and finding hope in God.
- Accepting Consequences and Finding Paradise — Accepting the consequences is a repentant heart saying ‘Yes’ to what has been done, praying for mercy, and possibly discovering grace.
Barry is a writer, coach, online pastor, and course creator that has a passion for Mental Health and Spiritual Formation
