Learning to Lament

It was an ordinary Tuesday of my high school senior year. My childhood friend's mother had just died after a long illness. As I rushed into the choir room just ahead of the bell, I remember seeing her older brother pacing outside the school office, waiting for her to be released from class.

For years, I pretended not to notice my friend's mother’s decline when I spent the night enjoying her dad’s culinary expertise, when I hung out in their upstairs TV room after school, or when I tagged along on their family vacations.

When I heard the news of her mother’s passing, I did not go to my friend’s familiar house to console her. Her pain was something I couldn’t understand and did not want to see up close. The truth is, I felt a new kind of fearful sadness of my own that I did not know how to express, so I ignored it. 

I attended the funeral, but pretty much expected everything to be back to baseline soon afterward. I am not sure I ever talked about her mother’s death to anyone, especially God, who had apparently dropped the ball. My friend and I tried to continue our normal teenage lives. 

Later that year, we graduated and went our separate ways. Before Facebook, and at the height of long-distance charges, we drifted apart. I put my God and my friend in a box marked “high school” and did not take either one out for years.

I often wonder if it really was distance and decisions that came between us. I wonder how my relationship with God, and my friend, might have been different if I had expressed the unfamiliar disappointment, anger, disillusionment, and fear. 

Right now, many of us are hurting in new ways and most of us are not articulating it. As hard as we try to hold it together, grief is seeping out in small drips and large downpours. It catches us off guard and spills over onto unsuspecting family members, Facebook friends, Zoom conference attendees, and socially-distanced bystanders. God understands, and He wants us to talk about it. God wants us to lament.

What is Lament?

Lament is a passionate expression of grief or sorrow. It is more than just feeling the heartache. It is openly admitting to God the intense, confusing pain.

As humans we suffer, but only as believers do, we lament. It is uniquely difficult because of the closeness of our God. We know His promises and we know Him. Yet we live here in a world of sorrows, just as all His followers live, after the ascension and before His return. We live between promises. With feet in both worlds, a lament feels messy. We believe, but we hurt; we know, but we question.

Russ Ramsey in his book Struck describes lament as “a complaint bound to faith, confusion bound to trust, petition bound to allegiance.” For the believer, grief seldom stands alone. It takes on a deeper dimension. A harsh reality hurts more coming from Someone we love and trust. In lament, betrayal mixes with the grief.

We Are in Good Company

Both David, the man after God’s own heart, and Jesus, the man who embodied God’s own heart, were familiar with laments. Each cried out to God when his belief did not seem to match his experience.

David─dismissed, hunted, and rejected─penned nearly half of the Psalms, and one third of those are laments: How long? Why? Where are You?

Jesus pleaded for answers in Gethsemane with the impending crucifixion: “Let this cup pass.” At Golgotha in the middle of it, He cried: “Why have You forsaken Me?” 

His followers feel it now with the weight of the pandemic, racial injustice, economic inequality, health crises, wayward children, and lost jobs. Expressing our pain can sometimes feel disloyal, like we are giving up on God’s ultimate goodness─or maybe more like He is giving up on us. But God intended it for something much different.

Lament Demonstrates Belief

Lament shows belief like few other expressions can. In fact, it may be one of the truest forms of praise. Lament reaches out for God when logic urges us to run away. Mark Vroegop says, “The practice of lament is one of the most theologically informed things a person can do.” 

Some of the most heartfelt places in Scripture are rich in lament. Psalms, Lamentations, and Ecclesiastes all focus on hurt and expressing it. They range from personal pain to shared suffering and almost always end with a statement of confidence in the goodness of God, in praise. When we lament, we sift the truth out of difficult feelings and harsh realities.

Though, deep in the mire, a lament can feel like we are abandoning our faith; it is actually just the opposite. Lament announces that, even though we do not like what is happening, we are choosing to trust. When we lament, we are reaffirming our belief in this God we often do not understand.

I believe You exist.

Just as I would not send an email or make a phone call to someone I did not believe was real, by communicating to You I am confirming that I know You are there.

I believe You are powerful.

I can not hold someone accountable unless I believe they had the power to affect a different result. The fact that I am complaining to You means that I know You could have done something about it, and that You can bring about a different result in the future. 

I believe You love me.

By sharing my deep personal feelings with You, I affirm that You are a caring listener. Otherwise, I would keep the thoughts to myself. I hurt because I know You love me, and I can not humanly reconcile that love with my current reality.

Lament Makes Room for God

Rather than suffocating it with silence, lament breathes life into our relationship with Him, so no struggle is off limits. Passionate communication creates room for God, especially in our heartbreak. When we can be honest about our deepest pain, we allow Him in.

Centuries ago, William Arnot explained that “entering in,” using these timeless words: “When I weep, Christ enters by the openings which grief has made into my heart, and gently makes it all his own.” It took years of living to discover how God enters our suffering and points it all back to Himself. 

Whatever we are lamenting today─and we all are passionately grieving something in this remodeled world─we should not be afraid to bring God into it. It is the only way He can work within it and within us. One day, when we have walked further on this sidewalk, we will realize even these losses were meant for more than we know. 

When my father passed away, this faraway friend sensed how I was grieving. Still living in the small town where we grew up, she reached out to offer her help to my mother. I know my friend understands this pain, and I see her decades-old hurt being used for good. I just wish I had learned to lament all those years ago…when my friend and my faith both needed it.