Sometimes the greatest kindness is allowing someone to be honest about their pain without asking them to find the bright side.

I was probably in my early twenties when I read a book that would leave a lasting impression on me. I cannot remember every detail of what was written, but one thought settled so deeply within me that it has remained there ever since.

Tell yourself the truth.

Such simple words, and yet I have spent much of my life discovering just how difficult, and how necessary, they can be.

There is a peculiar courage required to look honestly at our lives. To acknowledge what hurts without allowing it to become larger than it is. To recognise what is good without pretending that everything is. To resist the temptation to make our sorrows sound more dramatic than they are, while also refusing to make them smaller simply because they might be uncomfortable for someone else to hear.

I have not always managed that balance well. I am still learning.

There have been seasons when I have wanted to be brave, to be positive, to keep smiling and carry on. And there have been others when I have felt weary of trying to find the right words for things that do not have easy explanations.

Sometimes life is simply hard.

Not every difficult season comes with an immediate lesson. Not every sorrow reveals a beautiful purpose while we are still living through it. And not every burden becomes lighter because someone reminds us to look on the bright side.

I have often wondered why we find it so difficult to let sadness have its place.

Perhaps it is because sorrow makes us uncomfortable, especially when it belongs to someone we love. We want to make things better. We search for something encouraging to say, some hopeful thought that might soften the pain. Our intentions are usually kind.

But I have come to realise that sometimes, in our eagerness to offer comfort, we hurry past the very thing someone is trying to tell us.

Their sorrow.

Their fear.

The truth of what they are living through.

And perhaps what they need most in that moment is not reassurance that everything will be all right, but the quiet kindness of someone willing to listen without trying to change how they feel.

I think this is one of the reasons I have grown to love the Psalms so deeply.

I often begin my mornings with one, and I never quite know what kind of human heart I will encounter on its pages.

Sometimes there is praise so full of wonder that it seems to overflow. Sometimes gratitude, delight and the sheer joy of being alive. And then, without warning, I find myself reading words that sound as though they have been written through tears.

Questions that have no immediate answers.

Cries from places of exhaustion and despair.

Longing that seems almost too heavy to carry.

And there they are, preserved in Scripture, not hidden away or softened to make them more comfortable to read.

I find that extraordinarily reassuring.

Because some mornings I come to God with gratitude spilling over. Other mornings, I come carrying things I cannot resolve, questions I cannot answer and concerns that have followed me through the night.

And the Psalms remind me that I am welcome in either condition.

I do not have to manufacture happiness before I open my Bible. I do not have to find something cheerful to say before I pray. I do not have to pretend that my heart is lighter than it is.

God already knows.

There is something deeply comforting about that.

I think back to that young woman in her twenties, reading about the importance of telling herself the truth. She could not possibly have known what the years ahead would hold. The joys that would take her breath away. The losses that would leave their mark. The unexpected turns, the prayers answered in ways she never anticipated, and the prayers that would remain unanswered for reasons she still does not understand.

She had so much living ahead of her.

And now, looking back across those years, I understand that telling ourselves the truth is not always as straightforward as it sounds.

Sometimes the truth is that we are grateful and grieving at the same time.

That we trust God and still feel afraid.

That we can laugh wholeheartedly in the afternoon and cry quietly in the evening.

That we can love our lives deeply while wishing certain parts of them had been different.

I have discovered that the human heart is capable of holding all these things together, even when they seem to contradict one another.

And perhaps that is why lament has become so meaningful to me.

For a long time, I think I associated faithfulness with being strong, with enduring, with continuing to praise God even when life was difficult. I still believe there is something precious about praising Him through hardship.

But the Psalms have helped me recognise that there is another kind of faithfulness too.

The kind that comes before God without having found a way to make sense of everything.

The kind that says, Lord, this hurts.

The kind that asks questions, weeps over loss, admits weariness and still turns towards Him.

There is no contradiction in that.

I think of the people who have trusted me with their sorrows over the years, and of the times I have entrusted mine to others. I remember how much it has meant when someone has simply stayed with me in a difficult conversation, without rushing to offer an explanation or trying to find something positive before I have finished speaking.

There is an extraordinary tenderness in being allowed to tell the truth about what we are carrying.

And I wonder whether we sometimes underestimate the gift of offering that same freedom to someone else.

We do not always have to find the right words.

We do not always have to make the sadness smaller.

Sometimes we can simply acknowledge that what another person is going through is painful, and allow that truth to stand.

I do not want sorrow to become the only language of my life. There is far too much beauty, laughter, love and goodness for that. I want to keep celebrating, singing, giving thanks and recognising the countless ways God has been faithful to me.

But neither do I want to become someone who feels she must hide the difficult parts of life in order to speak of His goodness.

Because I have known His goodness in those difficult places too.

Not always through circumstances changing. Not always through answers arriving. Sometimes simply through the assurance that He has heard me, even when all I could bring Him was a weary heart.

And that brings me back to the Psalms.

I love that they do not sound like one continuous song of happiness. They contain the voices of people who knew what it meant to rejoice, to suffer, to wait, to question, to remember and to hope.

People whose lives were as complicated and human as ours.

And God made room for their words.

I find myself returning to that thought more often as the years pass.

I do not need to choose between being grateful and being honest about what hurts. My faith is not diminished by admitting that some days are difficult. The tears I bring before God belong just as surely as the songs of praise.

In some ways, I am still that young woman, learning to tell herself the truth. And through all the years that have followed, one thing has remained constant: the quiet confidence that the God who hears my songs of praise listens just as tenderly when all I have left are tears.