Embracing Lament: Our complaints deserve something better than nice
I can only begin to describe how helped I was the night I shouted my complaints to God.
On that lonely Sunday evening three months ago, I not only cried out to God but also made a list of the reasons why. I recorded everything I disliked about my life those days and then decided to include my list in a blog post.
I’m not sorry I put it all out there. I’m certainly not sorry for my outburst to God. But looking back now, I realize I wouldn’t include all the same items on such a list today. I’ve come to terms with much of what was bothering me then.
Mark Vroegrop reports a similar experience. He kept a journal of his complaints, and writing them down released him from their grip. Rereading his entries later, he decided some of what he’d listed was actually silly. But his complaints didn’t feel silly when he wrote them. He found strength in the freedom to acknowledge—to himself and to God—what was bothering him.
Some believers feel uncomfortable admitting they’re unhappy with where God has left them. They think it’s wrong to be anything but chipper, smiling, nice. This is a bigger problem than for caregivers. Too many Christians, infected with the “nice” virus, go through life running from conflict, avoiding confrontation, and stifling their feelings about problems they’re facing.
(Some Christian nonprofit boards of directors are notably inefficient largely because of this syndrome. Often Christians on a board will not disagree with the group or one vocal member, call out a bully, or advocate for a decision that seems wrong to some in the group. It wouldn’t be nice. And so the board flounders and the organization falters.)
It's a similar pattern for suffering Christians. “How are you?” they hear a dozen times at church. And they’re unwilling to answer anything but “Fine.”
But we need not embrace social conventions in our relationship with God. He doesn’t need us to be nice. We will find unrealized freedom and relief when we verbalize to him the torment we’ve been stifling.
And most important, we’ll grow closer to him. “Lament is not a path to worship,” Michael Card wrote in A Sacred Sorrow, “but the path of worship.” “We bring our complaints to the Lord for the purpose of moving us toward him,” Vroegop wrote.
We complain to God as an act of trust. We’re admitting we can’t handle it all by ourselves. We need his intervention. We may not be happy if it doesn’t seem to be forthcoming. But we’re admitting to him—and ourselves—there’s no hope except his strong, guiding presence with us as we endure the thing we despise.
Read: Psalm 142
Listen: Songs of Hope: Psalm 142 by Calvary Westlake
Pray: “I cry to you, O Lord; I say, ‘You are my refuge; my portion in the land of the living.’”