If you are a human alive in the year 2020 it is reasonable to think that your life has been touched by grief. Whether it was a personal loss of a loved one, a friend or holding the hand of someone close to you as they walked through a loss. You may even have experienced the loss of income, stability, your job or been the support system for someone close to you that has lost their income. Even if none of these has affected you, its probable that you have experienced a loss of freedom due to various lockdowns taking affect throughout the world. The loss of freedom to move, loss of the freedom to travel even the loss of your security and peace.
What once felt like solid ground has quickly turned to swampy mud threatening to pull you under. Insecurity and uncertainty seems to be the order of every day. If you are anything like me, you may find yourself wondering where God is, then this post is for you. Surrendering to a season of grief may not be what you had on your list of New Year resolutions but allow me to encourage you with what I’m learning about leaning in when all you want is to give up.
The definition of grief according to Dictionary.com is the keen mental suffering or distress over affliction or loss; sharp sorrow; painful regret. It is a cause or occasion of keen distress or sorrow.
So, here I am. 2020 kicked off with my admittance to Akeso Psychiatric Hospital (you can read about it here). We entered lockdown. So, here I am. Its been two months since we lost Andre’s father. Its been two months since the school I had poured myself into shut down. So, here I am. Home, unemployed and swimming in a sea of loss.
That which I thought I could count on has turned to dust in my hands. I am in distress over loss, I wake up every morning with painful regret. Could I have done more to save the school? I was the principal after all. Could I have done more to win over the members of the board? Could I have worked more than 58 hours of overtime every month? Why didn’t God answer my prayers?
Its an arrow of sharp sorrow piercing my heart every time we see Andres mom. The unfairness of not being able to see Ivan the weeks leading up to his death. The harsh reality of finding out he had passed by being presented with his corpse. Seeing him helpless, small and empty lying on a table in the morgue. Its the way nothing feels right without him. The way life is so very different now. Forever altered. Its the mental suffering over the affliction of this world. The injustice of our society, the anger over the state of the state hospitals and what the lower incomes of our country suffer on a daily basis. The hardships of this fallen world. Here I am, swimming on an ocean of grief that fills me so that I can not breathe, I can not move, all I can do is sit, stare and exist.
Grief is like the ocean; it comes on waves. Ebbing and flowing. Sometimes the water is calm and sometimes it is overwhelming. All we can do is learn to swim. – Vicki Harrison
I find myself bursting into tears at random moments, moved by the hardship this season has brought. I find myself doubting the goodness of God. I find myself questioning His love for me. Through my sorrow I have found myself wondering in this desert place. For the first time in a long time I don’t have the strength to get up from this internal place. I cant paste this grin on my face anymore. I cant pretend that this isn’t happening. I cant pretend that the last three years of my life hasn’t unraveled me to my core. How could you allow this Lord? Then the guilt because I’m supposed to smile and say “Its God’s plan for me. His good plan.” And when I don’t believe that, I question that He could still love me. How could He possibly care? This must be happening because of my lack of faith? I am not good enough. I am invisible and the ache in my heart carries me away.
In one of the hardest seasons of life that seems so magnified by the intense awareness of the suffering written on the faces of strangers I see everywhere, I don’t feel His presence like I used to. He seems so very absent. The atmosphere so thick with hardship and fear wherever you go. It’s here that I am learning what it is to lament. I am not talking about learning to complain and grumble. According to Oxford languages to lament means a passionate expression of grief or sorrow (noun) or to express passionate grief about something or express regret or disappointment (verb). It is a heart wrenching, deep soul cry against the ocean of grief one experiences towards injustice or loss.
It can be scary. Grief. To allow yourself to feel your sorrow. And yet nothing is wasted as He has chosen to teach me the sacred and divine act that is lamenting. Did you know that in your hard season God wants you to bring it before Him in all its ugliness? If you are experiencing these questions in your heart all you need to do is look to Lamentations 3:4-8 to see that you are not allow as you question your season of grief.
“My flesh and my skin hath He made old; He hath broken my bones. He hath builded against me, and compassed me with gall and travail. He hath set me in dark places, as they that be dead of old. He hath hedged me about, that I cannot get out: He hath made my chain heavy. Also when I cry and shout, He shutteth out my prayer.” (NKJV)
In this lament poem the author gives voice to Gods people in the midst of the grief they experience during the destruction of Jerusalem and it’s temple. He writes that God has set them in dark places, He has hedged them in and they cannot get out. Their chains are heavy and although they cry out to God, He chooses to shut out their prayers. Ouch. What do we tend to do when we find ourselves walking through seasons that seem so dark, unfair and the world around us is filled with suffering?
We tend to walk away from God. Instead Lamentations teaches us that communicating our distress about what’s wrong in our lives to God is a totally appropriate response to the evils of this world. Through our lamentations we can come to the realization that we may be where we are because of our own choices or through the broken nature of our world but God is sovereign. And He cares about our emotions, our grief. Now, please understand I am not talking about the kind of complaint that would see Karen asking for a manager. I am talking about the type of sorrow that will leave the landscape of your internal self forever marked, shaped and changed.
When we present God with our intimate lamentations about our distress, our sorrow, our grief over this world, over Covid19, over the explosion in Lebanon, over human trafficking, over farm murders, over starving nations. When we do that we bring these evils to His attention. Our cries reach His heart and His eyes look toward the source of our lament. When we allow our hearts to be big enough to carry the lamentations of our lives and others to the throne room the heart of God is stirred. The fear of God can come, reverence for Him is restored and He draws us in closer to His heart, making us more like Him. Filling us with love, compassion and allowing us to hope in Him and not our circumstances.
“It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is Thy faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in Him. The Lord is good unto them that wait for Him, to the soul that seeketh Him. It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord. It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth.” Lamentations 3:22-27 (NKJV)
If we never face hardship, we will never know the depths of His love for us (Psalm 34:18) and we will never be His authentic expression of love to those in a dying and broken world. When we bring our lamentations before God we learn that He truly cares about our suffering, we learn that He is tender toward us in our heartache, we learn that He hates injustice and will restore justice in His time, we learn that our circumstances don’t change God – they change us. We learn that He is worthy of our hope and His mercy is new every day and He is our strength for every minute of that day. What a wonderful thing it is to learn to wait in the shadow of the almighty God.
I am not through my hard season and parts of my soul are so heavy but I want to encourage you beloved as I lament before God I bring you before His throne and I know that He will surely turn our mourning to joy (Jeremiah 31). And what a joy it is to live knowing that my circumstances don’t change the loving nature of my good Father. He also wants me and you to bring our rawest of thoughts and sorrow before Him for He cares for us. He offers us the sacred act of lamenting before Him and all the while He looks at you and I with eyes of love. He saw you when you lost your loved one. He saw you when you received your notice that your company couldn’t employ you any longer. He saw you when that eviction notice came.
And tears filled His eyes even as He looks at the joy He seems coming to your face in due time.
For His anger is but for a moment, His favor is for life; Weeping may endure for a night, But joy comes in the morning. – Psalm 30:5 (NKJV)
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