Discomfort is exactly what it sounds like: an inconvenience, an unease, a moment or season where life no longer fits the way it once did. It isn’t always loud, but it makes itself known. Sometimes it’s instinct. Other times, it’s a physical reaction, a tightening in the chest, a weight in the belly. Or a knowing in the spirit that something isn’t right.
It can arrive like fog, slow and invisible, settling in before we realize we’ve lost the view. I’ve felt it in my body, when familiar routines no longer felt like mine. I’ve felt it stepping into a space and knowing immediately, I didn’t belong. I’ve felt it in decisions that looked fine on paper but felt misaligned in my bones. And I’ve felt it in those long, quiet stretches when everything around me was moving, and I was standing still.
Discomfort is not punishment. It’s preparation.
Sometimes, it’s the thing that urges us to stretch. To make room for what’s next. To reimagine what we’re becoming.
Even nature feels discomfort, and it doesn’t avoid it.
The forest creaks before spring. Bark splits open so the tree can grow. Roots push through tight soil. Everything living must pass through tension to become something else.
But we humans have grown clever at sidestepping it. We scroll, binge, beautify, reframe. We label discomfort as failure, when really, it’s just part of the process. We crave the bloom and skip the breaking. We ignore the cracking that comes before clarity.
I used to run from it too. That aching pause between endings and beginnings. The stillness that feels more like stuck-ness. But eventually, discomfort became a mirror. It showed me what I had been avoiding: change, grief, truth, expansion. Things that couldn’t arrive until I made space for them.
Somewhere along the way, I stopped trying to escape. I started to listen instead. Discomfort became a signal not to panic, but to pay attention. Not everything needs to be fixed right away. Some things need to be witnessed. Like how the earth rests before the thaw. Like how the moon disappears before it returns.
I often think about the discomfort woven into the story of Easter. The death and burial of Jesus must have been a deep ache, not only for those who loved him, but perhaps even for God. Yet that discomfort, that surrender, became the path to something redemptive and eternal. Two thousand years later, many of us still draw strength from that act of love and sacrifice.
And if Jesus isn't part of your belief system, that’s okay. Nearly all spiritual traditions ask something of us in the realm of discomfort. They call us to fast, to wait, to let go, to trust. To abandon comfort in order to move toward healing, wholeness, or holiness. Discomfort, then, isn’t just a personal experience. It’s a shared threshold. A spiritual one. It’s the human ache that lives under every transformation story, no matter where we come from or what we believe.
So now, when discomfort comes,
let’s light a candle.
Go for a walk without a phone.
Let the question stay unanswered.
Let the ache speak.
Because growth doesn’t always feel good.
But it’s honest.
And it leads somewhere real.
A few questions for your own quiet moments
- What part of your life feels tight, like a seed waiting to break open?
- Where have you been avoiding discomfort, and what might it be asking of you?
- Can you treat this in-between season as a sacred space, even if it feels unfinished?
