Embracing lament: health and hope for anyone burdened by loss

Several years ago a friend in my men’s Bible study lost his 40-something daughter to a long battle with breast cancer. She was an only child, and he and his wife grieved deeply.

“I just had to stop praying for a while,” he told me in church a few weeks after the funeral.

Some time later he invited a friend to our meetings, and this fellow, a retired physician, started attending our study every week. This was unusual because the man claimed to be an atheist. “When my wife got sick, I prayed and prayed for her to get well,” he once told me. “But she died anyway. And after that, I just couldn’t believe in God anymore.”

 Recently considered

I was no help to either of these men. They both needed to understand something about God I’ve only recently considered. Each of them could have rekindled, even deepened faith if they hadn’t let grief become a barrier between him and them.

Sheila Alonso photo at istockphoto.com

Now I know that God’s OK with us when we’re not OK with him. He not only can cope with our complaints and endure our outbursts and listen to our questions—he wants us to bring them all to him.

I know this is true because of what I’m learning about lament.

I wish I had pointed these friends to any one of dozens of Bible passages expressing the very hurt and confusion they felt. A whole book of the Bible, called Lamentations, is given to lament. But even more meaningful to me have been the lament Psalms I’ve only recently begun to discover.

 Eyes opened

My eyes were opened by a book a friend sent right after we received Evelyn’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis: Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy—Discovering the Grace of Lament.

Joni Eareckson Tada’s foreword brought me to tears before I had even reached the first chapter. She described her own discovery of lament. After a tragic accident that broke her neck, “My paralysis was permanent,” she remembers. “And inside, I died.” Finally, “after weeks of being depressed,” she prayed, “God, if I can’t die, please show me how to live.”

He answered through the gentle guidance of a counselor who pointed her to Lamentations and then the treasure store of lament in the Psalms.

“I was amazed to learn that God welcomes our laments,” she wrote. “When we are in pain God feels the sting in his chest. Our frustrations and questions do not fluster him. He knows all about them. He wrote the book on them. More astoundingly, he invites us to come and air our grievances before him.”

 Personal tragedy

The book’s author, Mark Vroegop, shows us how to do this. He speaks from the crucible of his personal tragedy. He and his wife suffered through the agony of cradling a perfectly formed newborn infant whose heart had stopped beating several days before delivery.

Meanwhile, he was pastoring a large congregation serving couples struggling with infertility, parents dealing with prodigal children, and a myriad of grief-stricken parishioners who came for counsel or comfort when their loved one died. At every corner he discovered people like the two friends I’ve mentioned above, overwhelmed with loss but unaware that God is ready to hear them talk about it.

 New series

Besides his story and his analysis of biblical lament, his indexes include a list of at least 56 Psalms of lament, more than a third of the Psalter. Starting next week, each Monday Meditation appearing at this website will feature one of these Psalms. The plan is for this to continue through November, allowing us to meditate on 13 or more examples that embolden us to embrace God’s gift of lament.

My goal is not to instruct (instruction has never been this website’s purpose), but to shine a spotlight on all the possibilities for hope and health God offers in these passages. And to learn from them as I write.

The Scriptures speak for themselves. I don’t anticipate lengthy commentary, although I do plan to point out how these Psalms fit a pattern for lament we can imitate in our own prayers. Vroegop’s book has been my instruction manual, and I will cite him more than once.

The plan is to meditate on examples that embolden us to embrace God’s gift of lament.

From his three-page bibliography, I’ve chosen a couple of other books that will also help me as I write: Rejoicing in Lament—Wrestling with Incurable Cancer and Life in Christ, by J. Todd Billings, and A Sacred Sorrow—Reaching Out to God in the Lost Language of Lament, by Michael Card. He quotes from them in his book, and I may want to do the same.

More than once in the last five years, I’ve gone to God with heart cries I’ve now seen in Scripture: “Why?” “How long?” “Help!”

Now I’m resting in the assurance that God is ready to hear my questions. The Psalms of lament are helping me. I’m praying some readers will also discover the health and hope that come from embracing lament.