When did we start believing that if something is uncomfortable, something must be wrong?
We live in a world engineered to eliminate any trace of discomfort. We can order food without talking to a physical person. We can end relationships without a conversation. We can curate our entire reality so we never encounter a thought that challenges us. We’ve built lives where friction is a bug, not a feature.
We’ve gotten so good at avoiding discomfort that when it inevitably shows up—in relationships, faith, personal growth, obedience—we don’t have the capacity for it anymore. We treat it like a malfunction instead of recognizing it might be the most important thing happening to us.
As a culture, we label any discomfort as inherently negative. Something to avoid, medicate, or escape at all costs. But what if discomfort isn’t the enemy of growth? What if discomfort has to happen TO grow? What are we giving up, spiritually, emotionally, relationally, by refusing to sit in the tension long enough for transformation to happen?
Hebrews 12:11 says, “No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.” The Bible literally says that growth is NOT pleasant AND it produces a harvest. Both are true.
Discomfort isn’t a sign that something’s wrong. It’s a sign that something’s being produced.
Why Discomfort Has Become the Enemy
At some point in time, we moved from “comfort is nice” to “I DESERVE comfort”. We now measure the quality of our lives, relationships, jobs, and even our faith by how comfortable they make us feel.
We’ve developed a “discomfort aversion” and pair discomfort with “unsafe”, “bad”, or “wrong”. But that’s not how growth works. Meaningful transformation doesn’t happen overnight. Sometimes we have to get a little uncomfy to grow.
But in our society where everything is so convenient (maybe to a fault), comfort has become a moral right. “This is MY truth.” I’ve done this too, created my own version of reality because the actual truth required me to change something I didn’t want to change. It’s easier to rewrite the narrative than to sit in the discomfort of realizing maybe I’M the one who needs to grow.
And culture validates this. We’re told our comfort matters more than someone else’s conviction. That our feelings should dictate everyone else’s boundaries.
Discomfort Aversion in Action
This shows up all around us, sometimes without us even noticing. We’ve normalized these patterns so deeply that we don’t see what they’re costing us.
Ghosting
We have to have a hard conversation with a friend, a relationship, a coworker, but we’re scared. So instead, we just stop replying altogether. We never respond to their messages and calls. We decide that disappearing is better than facing the discomfort of an honest conversation. We’d rather feel the guilt of vanishing than the discomfort of the conversation.
Quitting
Our tenacity suffers from this too. The minute something stops being enjoyable, we quit. Jobs, hobbies, churches, friendships, workout routines, diets, the list goes on. The second it gets hard, we’re out. We confuse “this isn’t fun anymore” with “this isn’t for me anymore”. What if we were two weeks away from a breakthrough? What if we would finally “reap our harvest” if we kept with it for a little longer (Galatians 6:9)?
Staying Busy
In our fast-moving culture, sitting still and doing nothing might sound absurd. Sometimes, we can over-schedule and stay busy just to avoid sitting with ourselves. Silence and stillness become uncomfortable because they force us to confront what we’ve been avoiding.
Even today, when sitting down to write this post, I went down so many different rabbit holes to avoid feeling things I didn’t want to feel. I got a lot done—paid some bills, researched some PCPs—but I didn’t want to write this post because I knew it’d be hard.
Sometimes we force ourselves to stay busy, filling every moment with noise, activity, and distraction to avoid feeling. Psalm 46:10’s “Be still and know that I am God” isn’t a suggestion. It’s a command. We’re commanded to take some time to be still, to face the discomfort we might be hiding from ourselves.
Parenting: Clearing the Path
We even face the discomfort aversion when parenting our kids. We clear every path for them instead of walking with them through difficulty. We risk raising a generation that has never learned that hard things can be survived. And that surviving them builds something in you that ease and comfort never could.
It takes every fiber of my being not to pick up my daughter’s empty bowl and put it in the sink for her when she’s throwing a fit about it. Sometimes I give in and do it for her, just to avoid the tantrum. But I know she needs to learn to do “hard” things. (I thank God for my ever-so-patient husband who walks her step-by-step through things like this!)
The reality is we parent our kids to become successful adults. And success isn’t built through comfort alone. We need to allow ourselves as parents to sit in the discomfort of watching our kids struggle sometimes so our discomfort aversion doesn’t get passed down.
Negative Emotions
I wrote more in depth about this here. We treat every negative emotion as a problem to solve immediately. Sad? Fix it. Anxious? Numb it. Angry? Suppress it. Grieving? Move through it faster. We’ve lost the ability to sit with an emotion long enough to hear what it’s telling us.
I’m a textbook emotion suppressor. I’m so good at it that I don’t even know what I’m feeling most of the time. And I HATE negative emotions. If I’m having a negative emotion, I’ll spiral about it all day until I figure out why I feel the way I do. I’m unable to identify the emotions I feel any further than “good” or “bad”. But by suppressing the emotion, I lose the message of what the emotion is trying to tell me.
And figuring it out means sitting in the discomfort of the negative emotion long enough to find out what it’s telling me, which is not fun. I’d rather shove it down and tell myself I’m happy. But that’s not growth. That’s running from the messenger.
The Illusion of Control
And here’s the deeper issue: avoiding discomfort gives us an illusion of control. “At least I know what to expect.” We’d rather have miserable certainty than hopeful uncertainty. We say things like, “It’s not great, but at least I know what I’m dealing with.” We say this about jobs, relationships, spiritual stagnation, and situations we KNOW God is calling us out of.
We’ll stay in a life that’s slowly suffocating us because the unknown feels like a bigger threat than the known misery. We grip the steering wheel tighter, stubbornly trudging along our own miserable path instead of letting God drive and take us somewhere better.
Proverbs 3:5-6 is quoted a lot—”Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to Him, and He will make your paths straight”—but if we really, really break it down, we see that we can’t let God have control and still have control ourselves. Leaning on our own understanding means we can only go where WE can see. Submitting to God means He can take us places we couldn’t navigate on our own…but we have to let go of the wheel first.
Back to Egypt
My pastor spoke about this recently and it really struck me: God deliberately led the Israelites the long way around out of Egypt (Exodus 13:17-18). He didn’t do this to punish them, but because He knew if they faced battle too soon, they’d run back to what was familiar—even though what was familiar was slavery. And they DID end up romanticizing Egypt. Numbers 11:5 says, “We remember the fish we ate in Egypt at no cost…” They were nostalgic for SLAVERY because at least it was predictable.
We do the same thing. We romanticize the things that were keeping us stuck because at least they were familiar. We knew what to expect. We’d rather go back to bondage we know than face freedom we don’t.
“I know this job is draining me, but at least it’s stable.”
“I know this relationship isn’t healthy, but at least I’m not alone.”
“I know God is calling me to something new, but what if it doesn’t work out?”
The common thread here is we choose the pain we know over the healing we don’t. And we call it “being responsible” or “being realistic” when often it’s just fear in disguise.
What’s Actually Happening in the Discomfort
So, if discomfort isn’t the enemy, what is it actually doing?
James 1:2-4 says, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of various kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”
Romans 5:3-5 lays out the sequence even more clearly: suffering produces perseverance, perseverance produces character, and character produces hope.
There’s an order here. We can’t skip right to hope without going through the first three. We can’t get to maturity without the trial. The discomfort isn’t a detour from God’s plan, an inconvenient setback. It IS the plan. It’s the process working.
And what’s crazy is, I experienced this firsthand.
My Testimony: Stepping Into the Unknown
Six months ago, God told me to make a change. He told me to step back from my hospital job and pursue ARMR and other opportunities fulltime. I felt the lightning bolt in my chest and KNEW I needed to do what He said but…months went by, and I did nothing. My husband and I worked out the numbers so many times, and it was so much easier to stay. The “responsible” thing was to stay put, even though I felt so much guilt. I saw the discomfort coming, the unknown, coming, and I wanted to avoid it. I write about trusting God every single Saturday, and I still had a death grip on the steering wheel when it was MY turn to let go.
James and I knew it would require sacrifice. We knew it would mean less of a safety net and that it wouldn’t look “smart” on paper. But we also wanted to obey what God had told me, and we had worked out the numbers for it to make a little more sense to leave.
So, we finally stepped. I reduced my hospital hours to one day a week and started teaching piano on my off days.
Literally the day I notified work I was reducing my hours in two weeks, doors started opening that I hadn’t even knocked on. I randomly had three more piano students reach out to me even though I hadn’t posted about my lessons in weeks. I only needed two students for our plan to work, and I now have FIVE. Things James had been working on broke through with timing that could only be God. My hospital job has been more than accommodating with my schedule change. And now, I’m doing work that makes me feel alive and fulfilled in a way I wasn’t before. I get to spend more time with my kids and am reconnecting with a version of myself I haven’t seen in a long time.
I couldn’t see any of this from the other side of the decision. The provision didn’t show up BEFORE the obedience. It showed up AFTER. And I knew that would be the case but was still scared to take the step.
And things aren’t all rosy and perfect. Things still go wrong. This isn’t a prosperity gospel fairy tale. It’s more like manna—just enough for today. But “just enough” with God is more than “more than enough” on my own. I’m learning that God’s “just enough” IS the provision, not a lesser version of it.
If I had stayed in the comfortable-but-predictable place, I wouldn’t have any of this. Not the fulfillment, not the open doors, not the breakthroughs. I would have had certainty but missed everything God was preparing.
2 Corinthians 5:7 tells us to “walk by faith, not by sight.” Walking by sight means I can only go where I can already see the path. Walking by faith means God can lead me somewhere I never would’ve found on my own.
And what’s cool is this is how God has always operated. He told Abraham to leave before telling him where he was going (Genesis 12:1). He told Moses to stretch out his staff before the sea parted (Exodus 14:16). Peter had to step out of the boat before walking on water (Matthew 14:29). The pattern is always the same: obedience first, provision after. Never the other way around.
When Discomfort is an Indicator…or a Warning
Discomfort isn’t always our enemy or a battle to win. Sometimes it’s an indicator that transformation is in process—that something is being built, and we need to hold on.
But sometimes, the discomfort is something to run from. I’m NOT saying “grit your teeth and endure everything”. That’s a totally different message, one that has been used to keep people in abusive churches, toxic relationships, and harmful situations under the guise of “faithfulness”.
There’s a difference between growth discomfort and danger discomfort.
Growth discomfort moves you TOWARD something God is building. It’s the discomfort of obedience, vulnerability, change, and stretching. It comes with God’s presence.
Danger discomfort is a WARNING to move AWAY. It’s the discomfort of abuse, manipulation, toxicity, and genuine harm. It comes with confusion, shame, fear, and isolation.
Ask yourself: Is this discomfort stretching me or breaking me? Is God’s presence in this desert, or am I just being asked to endure harm?
I’ve written about this distinction extensively: how to tell if you’re protecting yourself from harm or growth, when to trust your discernment, knowing the difference between conviction and toxicity, knowing when to stay and when to go.
Stepping Into the Discomfort
My pastor ended his sermon by asking us, “What’s your ‘Egypt’?” What’s the familiar-but-not-good-for-you thing you keep going back to because at least you know what to expect? What has God been whispering about for months that you keep delaying because the unknown feels scarier than staying put?
What’s the discomfort you’ve been avoiding? Is it a conversation you need to have? A step of obedience you’ve been postponing? A change you know needs to happen but you keep finding reasons to delay? A boundary that will be uncomfortable to set but necessary for growth?
Ask yourself: Am I being responsible, or am I being afraid? Sometimes these look identical from the outside but they feel very different on the inside. Responsibility considers the options and moves forward with wisdom. Fear considers the options and…does nothing. I knew what I was supposed to do and took half a year to do it, because I was scared. I looked up all the numbers but never made a move.
And starting will probably be the hardest part. We’ll probably never feel “ready enough” to step into the unknown. Moses didn’t feel ready. Gideon didn’t feel ready. Jeremiah said he was too young (Jeremiah 1:6-8). David was a shepherd boy.
God doesn’t call the equipped. He equips the called.
If you’re waiting to feel ready, you’ll wait forever.
Isaiah 43:19 says God is “making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.” He makes a way IN the wilderness, not around it. Not before you get there. IN it. The wilderness isn’t where God’s plan fails, but where His provision shows up.
The discomfort you’re feeling right now might not be a sign that you’re on the wrong path. It could be the very evidence that you’re on the right one. Growth doesn’t always feel like arrival. It can feel like stretching. Stretching is always uncomfortable before it’s freeing.
Discomfort isn’t the enemy. The thing on the other side of your discomfort is—the harvest, the healing, the breakthrough, the Promised Land—and it’s real. But you’ll never see it if you keep going back to Egypt.
I’ll close with my favorite verse, my mantra for ARMR Collective:
“Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” – Galatians 6:9
Don’t give up. The harvest is coming, but we have to stay in the field.
