Learning to lament

A very wise friend told me a few weeks ago that learning to lament is a biblical and a natural response to suffering and grief. Lament means to express deep grief. In fact, one meaning says that it's a "passionate expression of grief or sorrow." I don't think we allow ourselves this emotion.  I believe society has grown to tell us that we need to be cheerful and we need to get over things and we need to move on quickly.

And I couldn't disagree more.

While death isn't a sting for the one who leaves this earth, the ripple effect of pain they leave behind cannot be denied. Death hurts and pinches and pulls your heart in ways that you aren't sure are real. The prick of death comes about even in the happiest of days. A trigger tears and emotional can happen without any warning or sense. Grief is such a mystery, but it's also one of the most real things we deal with on this earth.

Life begins, with cries of joy and tears of fresh breaths and baby snuggles. Life goes on and each day is, quite simply, a beautiful gift. Each breath is a work of God moving around each of us without thought. Then, as the circle closes, death approaches and it is finished. Life ends with cries of goodbye and pain, tears run warm down cheeks of loneliness and loss. The curse of sin left us with this pain, yet we have the hope of Christ to renew our hearts.

Losing my mom has been quite painful. Her death has marked me in ways that I am not sure I can articulate. Even now, two months after her death, I still feel like I'm in an awful dream and that I'll be able to call her whenever I want. But this isn't the case. It's been two months and one week since I've been able to talk to her on the phone and ask her how she's feeling, how her pain is, how her heart is. It's been longer than that since I've asked her how to make cookies, what I was like as a three year old or tell her all about what the kids are doing. I didn't just lose my mom as she took her last breath, I lost my last parent, my biggest life-long cheerleader, my children's Gramma, my dear friend, and the loss of my childhood questions that I'll never know the answers to.

While death steals from us things we never want taken away, God restores and renews.  Even though it may take months or years, we slowly become what He has planned for us to be -- more like Him. We gain more of His comfort because we know loss.  We gain more of His sight because what is seen is temporal and what is unseen is eternal.  We gain new perspectives as we are changed people with each passing trial and each lonely trench. We gain life experiences and words of wisdom to care for those walking a similar path that we have already endured.  We gain great humility as we see that we are finite and sinful and truly wretched people without the beauty of Christ in us. There is great gain in suffering, if only we can lift ours eyes even for a second to see the One who is holding us and pursuing us and pouring into us.

The same friend I mentioned earlier reminded me that on the other side of pain there is a great testimony and a beautiful joy that comes from suffering, if we learn to lament and sit at the feet of Christ while we mourn and heal. When we cry out to the Lord with great pain, with heart aches that overwhelm; when we are able to sit silently before the Lord, with questions and confusion and sadness that only death can bring; when we are able to accept His presence as the safest place, acknowledge His position as the Most High and Sovereign, and appreciate His love, grace and healing that comes from suffering. This is lamenting.

And then, you rise. Lamenting ceases, although the pain never really goes away. And from this season of quiet and rest and tears, come joy.  You reap a deeper understanding of the Almighty God. You walk in confidence with the One who knows all things. And you praise Him, you give and pour out and tell all about Who He is and what He has done. Because at the end of it all, you'll have Him more and more.  What a beautiful reward for such a wretched season.