Tag: lament

Lament in our everyday lives

Last week, we looked at how the Bible is full of lament and God invites us to lament in our everyday lives. The practice helps us to cling on to God and, as such, is a hope-filled action. We are now going to take a closer look at psalms of lament, and how we can utilise them in our own lives.

I don’t relish the experiences that have revealed how vital lament is to me, but I do cherish the renewed understanding that God has given us permission to vent all our anger, frustration, anguish, as well as our questions. I have come to view lament as part of my survival kit.

Lent is fast approaching: this is a time in the Church calendar where we traditionally wrestle with that ‘in-between’ time of confusion and bewilderment. The disciples watched all their hope seemingly die with Jesus on the cross and on that day and Easter Saturday there is often space held to consider our own despair, before the celebrations of Resurrection Sunday.

Psalms of lament

The pandemic has brought suffering to so many families, and this life is full of troubles (as well as joys). If you don’t regularly practise lament, perhaps you could take time this Lent to explore the subject more fully and think about the different ways you can utilise the practice in your own life.

To begin with, you could try finding a psalm that seems to echo the cry of your heart and turn it into a prayer – or write your own lament.

Let’s look more closely at a psalm of lament, to see the four stages that they often (but not always) work through:

Address: the psalmist speaks directly to God, often revealing a level of intimacy in the relationship.

Complaint: Laying out the questions and anguish in a raw, totally honest way.

Request: Putting a direct request to the One that they know can help.

Expression of trust: Often the psalmist remembers God’s past faithfulness and turns to worship, declaring their trust in God.

You can write your own psalm according to these stages, or try using them as a basis for prayer. We will look at ways of doing both here.

Example: Psalm 13

This short psalm shows the four stages very clearly.

Address: How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever?
Complaint [God far, enemies triumphing]:

How long will you hide your face from me?
2 How long must I wrestle with my thoughts
    and day after day have sorrow in my heart?
    How long will my enemy triumph over me?

Request [more personal ‘my God’]:

3 Look on me and answer, Lord my God.
    Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death,
4 and my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,”
    and my foes will rejoice when I fall.

Statement of trust [and praise]: 5 But I trust in your unfailing love;
    my heart rejoices in your salvation.
6 I will sing the Lord’s praise,
    for he has been good to me.

Psalm as a springboard for prayer

Here is an example of the way in which I use particular psalms as launchpads for my own prayers, utilising Psalm 13 again:

1 How long, Lord? Will you forget me for ever?
    How long will you hide your face from me?

God I can’t see you at work in this situation. It feels like I am having to cope on my own. I know you are there – please reveal yourself to me. Show me you haven’t forgotten us.
2 How long must I wrestle with my thoughts
    and day after day have sorrow in my heart?
    How long will my enemy triumph over me?

This all feels relentless, and it does feel like the devil is having a field day. I am finding it hard to keep batting away the discouragement, and my own depression. How long is this going to go on for Lord?

3 Look on me and answer, Lord my God.
    Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death,
4 and my enemy will say, ‘I have overcome him,’
    and my foes will rejoice when I fall.

We need you to move – we need release! Come and act, move so that those around will know that you are God. And bring me your discernment and wisdom to know what to do – and your energy. I am so tired Lord…

5 But I trust in your unfailing love;
    my heart rejoices in your salvation.
6 I will sing the Lord’s praise,
    for he has been good to me.

I do trust you Lord, however hard that is to say at times – and I do know that you are good and that your character cannot change. I also choose to worship you, singing songs of thanks, because I know they stir my heart and do me good. Thank you for the salvation you have brought me, thank you for the way you have led me in the past – and thank you for the way you have upheld my family. I know that you love them more than I do – and trust that you have a hope and a future for each one of us.

Writing your own lament

Here are some questions to help you if you would like to try writing your own lament psalm. Use the suggestions, if helpful, in order to be honest before God but also meditate on the fact that God is with you in all your troubles or simply begin to allow God to minister to the hurting parts of your soul.

• Start by thinking about what difficulty – circumstance, person etc – is causing you anguish/anger/ anxiety/pain. Write out a description, and also how you feel about it – try and name the emotions.

• Do you feel that God is with you in it, or do you feel that he is absent? Try and write out where you feel God is.

• To help you with the second half of your lament, brainstorm some characteristics of/truths about God that you know in your head (even if you don’t feel them in your heart currently).

• Remind yourself of some of the ways God has shown his faithfulness to you in the past.

Use the notes you have made as a starting point to write out an honest lament. Try and end the psalm with some positive statements of trust – even if you aren’t feeling them right now.

Choosing to be honest before God

There have been moments in recent years when the extraordinary depths of pain and grief have wracked my body and soul, and I have been unable to do anything but sob my heart out. But I have had to make the choice to either do that before God, or trying to hide from him. In all honesty, there have been moments of both – although I know he always sees us. But when I have come before him I have certainly felt less alone. It is lament that has helped me to do that. Ultimately, I know God is good and would never want to go through any of this without him – lament helps me to hang on to him. It is certainly a practice I wouldn’t want to be without in my everyday life now.

Spiritual practices for this year

I had a wonderful time sharing at a local women’s group this last weekend. We looked at some of the spiritual practices that have helped me hold on to God during a particularly difficult few years. In this mini series, I am going to share some of that material with you. I hope and pray that there is something that you would like to try out in your own life.

Why spiritual practices?

I don’t know how your year has begun, but I have to say for my family and I it was nothing like we expected! My husband is the pastor of our church and, while we had a quiet Christmas, we had a busy weekend of New Year’s celebrations planned – a church party New Year’s Eve followed by a café-style church brunch service the following day. When I started feeling ill towards the end of the previous week I didn’t think too much of it – until I got really quite poorly. I was shocked when my Covid test was positive – I hadn’t had it at all up until that point.

So I spent the whole weekend and beyond isolating. When a new year comes round, many people – myself included – take the opportunity to look back over the previous year (although it took me a few extra days before I could get started on this), to thank God for all the good things and let go of the bad, and also resolve to go deeper with him in the next year. Perhaps Bible reading has become lax or there are other ways we haven’t done as well as we could – and we ask for his help to do better. But while Paul does talk about training like an athlete in 1 Corinthians 9 I think we can falsely believe we need to do certain things in order for God to love us. That’s just not right. If you know you can fall into that mindset, take a moment now to simply be in God’s presence, and be aware of his love for you.

I do think we’ve all been affected by the pandemic and January is a good time to refresh our spiritual lives anyway, in terms of what we do regularly to keep ourselves spiritually fit. It can sometimes feel like a new year stretches out before us, full of unknowns, but spiritual practises help to ground us, and draw us closer into God’s presence. I’d like to share about some perhaps lesser known (or at least lesser spotlighted) spiritual practices, which have held me during a period when I simply couldn’t do much more than get through each day.

Introducing lament

The Bible is full of lament, and it is an important way of processing difficulties. Lament simply means crying out to God, presenting our requests to him and sharing with him our pain and anguish.

Each one of us will face disappointments (such as being let down by those we love, hurt by the church), bereavement, negative circumstances that may be the result of our own sin or someone else’s. And many of us will face intense suffering, such as physical pain and/or mental ill health. 

Jesus himself said: “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33). So why do we find it so difficult to accept that? And why do we seem to be ill-equipped to deal with it in a healthy way? How do we take heart?

Life is hard – we do have the promise that one day: ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain’ (Rev 21:3-4) but, until then, God doesn’t expect us to hide our difficulties away. 

In fact he ensured that the songbook created for his people the Israelites contained plenty of examples of how to express the pain we feel in our difficulties. They actually sang laments together as a corporate body using these psalms. And we also have the books of Job and Lamentations.

Throughout the Bible we can see many examples of tears alongside prayers – including Jesus’ example in the Garden of Gethsemane – lament is very much a part of the biblical narrative. 

Our need to lament

God invites us to voice our struggles because he knows that if we don’t express our laments, we can become totally consumed and distracted by them – or ignore them, which can result in physical ailments as the emotional pain has no other way of being expressed and we are total, whole beings – our spiritual, physical, emotional beings all tied up and affecting one other.

I first connected with the psalms of lament in a time of intense pain and sin in my own life (which I talk about in my book Taking Off the Mask). When I read the words ‘My wounds fester and are loathsome because of my sinful folly. I am bowed down and brought very low; all day long I go about mourning…I am feeble and utterly crushed; I groan in anguish of heart’ (from Psalm 38:5–6,8) it was like the writer was describing exactly where I was at, and it helped me to reach out to God while I was in such turmoil.

Back then, it was a revelation of my own sinfulness and the resulting pain that caused me to lament. But in more recent years, it has been a cry from deep in my soul that has been almost unstoppable. It has become a way I have desperately tried to remain connected to God through circumstances that have threatened to engulf me or those I dearly love. Some days it can sometimes feel like all hope is lost – and yet lament is the bridge that helps me find my way back to God when he seems distant or hidden. Lament is, ultimately, hope-filled. It helps us to vocalise our determination that, despite circumstances that are totally bewildering, we refuse to turn away from our heavenly Father. We know he is good and has understanding way beyond ours. And so we can pour out our anguish and tears, alongside our praise, before him, knowing that he sees, hears, understands and is with us.

Next time we will look at how we can utilise psalms of lament in our everyday lives.

How long Lord?

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We can sometimes find it hard to know how to relate to Easter Saturday – that day of intense pain, and the crushing loss of hope. And yet the last year has taught us the importance of recognising our emotions – and of giving ourselves space to lament. I wrote the following verses a few weeks ago, when I felt overwhelmed by so much – and before any lockdown restrictions had been lifted. In all my own personal losses, and when faced with the collective loss too, I have felt comforted to know that Jesus truly understands.

I pray that each of you is able to take time to stop…breath…cry…and grieve as our hearts cry out: ‘How long Lord?’ We do rejoice in the knowledge that Jesus has won the final victory, but we also recognise that so much of life currently feels like Easter Saturday.

We each desperately feel the effects of months of isolation and loneliness,
The shutting down not only of shops, churches and schools (for a time)
But homes and other social interactions.
Grasping at connection through a screen,
Fatigued by the constant online interaction,
Yet desperate to experience something of the relationships we are used to, and still crave.

The terrifying burden of seeing a loved one suffer, as the, or a, disease grips them,
And then being separated from them – doors close, and we enter our home again…alone.
Some make it through – others, sadly not – and we don’t all have a chance to say goodbye.
What are we to do with that pain?
As the death toll keeps rising, and the emotional toll on so many grows and grows…
We experience collective grief; 
At times feeling totally and utterly overwhelmed.

We try to cope with the agony of watching loved ones suffer so, so much,
Feeling helpless, while also struggling with our own emotional turmoil.
Exhausted and heartbroken, we drag ourselves around
Trying to support those around us, do our jobs and run our homes, 
While all the while what we simply need to do is…stop…
And breathe
And cry
And grieve.

How long Lord? How long must this go on?

We recognise we have each been affected in some way.
We understand we need to be compassionate to ourselves,
As well as to others.
And yet we are still expected to get up each day, 
Manage our households and our jobs, 
And interact well with those in our churches and our neighbourhoods.

Our hearts break for the level of suffering so many have experienced,
The intensity of situations so many have worked within.
And yet, for some of us based at home, very little has changed – 
Although so much now seems like it will never be the same again.
We come to you for comfort, for care, for strength right deep into our bones.
We were not made for such prolonged pressure, 
And feel like we are buckling underneath it.

God we cry out to you: Have mercy!

Hope for the hurting

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I am delighted to welcome Liz Carter onto my blog today. Her beautiful new book, Treasure in Dark Places: Stories and Poems of Hope in the Hurting, which I had the joy of endorsing, is out today. I am thrilled that she agreed to share a little about the writing process and what life was like for her while she was writing it. Like the experience I had while writing my latest devotional, Liz was, at times, in deep despair and isolation when putting this book together. Wrestling with our own circumstances, looking to the Bible and trying to find some sort of sense for ourselves but also to bring hope to others is at the heart of much of the writing we both do. She is such a talented writer, weaving honest reflections with thought-provoking imagery. I commend her book to you wholeheartedly – it would make a wonderful Christmas present. I would definitely describe it as ‘hope for the hurting’. Here are her answers to a few questions I posed to her.

Tell me about the writing process during the isolation of shielding

When I first received the shielding letter back in March, I was shocked and fearful, the words ‘at risk of severe illness’ pounding through my mind. When I began to get into the swing of shielding, though, I thought I had it sorted, I thought I had a plan: I would finish the book I’d been working on for a while, a book about our identity in Jesus and God’s back-to-front kingdom. I told myself shielding wouldn’t be a huge issue because I was used to being isolated at home for long periods when ill with my lifelong lung condition. But I simply didn’t take into account the mental toll the whole thing would take, and how being separated from my family would send me into some dark days and darker nights. It felt as if the words were slipping away, as if this was not going to plan. It was as if a door was slammed in my face and I broke into pieces, already battered by isolation. 

Then I started to write some poetry about the pandemic and about the darkness I found myself in. I’d written so much before about living in physical pain, but this time the pain went further into my mind and the words began to flow in the most unexpected direction. At around the same time a couple of friends suggested I collected together some of the stories and poems from my website into a book, and so the idea for Treasure in Dark Places was born – and then grew so much wider, with mostly new material written over the painful time of shielding.

Was writing this new book a form of lament for you at times? 

Definitely. I found that words were pouring out that seemed almost too sharp, too vulnerable, too real at times, and they were words of lament. They were words that were birthed in struggle and that sat there in the pit with me, like the words of so many of the Psalmists who were never afraid to lay out their stark agony before God. Many of these Psalms have been a huge help to me over years of living with pain, and their words spoke even more deeply to me over these months, with their honest agony and their call to remember and to praise within the storm. 

I think that as Christians we often forget how to lament, or even feel that lament should not be given a place in our prayer lives or in our corporate worship. We’ve somehow inherited the twisted idea that we should only, ever, be living in great joy, unaffected by the sadness around us, in a kind of damaging triumphalism that leads us to feel as though we are letting God down when we turn to sadness, anger or other big emotions. But the Bible gives us permission to express those things in big loud voices, to shout out our pain, to cry out our struggle, to weep at the feet of Jesus when it all gets too much. For me, my writing this summer was a long lament and a choice to turn to God in the midst of it, so some of the poems in the book are more melancholic, and others turn more quickly to hope.

Treasure in dark places - hope for the hurting

How different was it to write the poetry and imaginative prose sections?

I found that in many of my stories I turned to poetic devices and phrases within the text at times, in order to echo the poetry. The main difference is that with the stories I needed to stop and consider the form, the overall framework and the beginning, middle and end – not so much to plan in depth, but to take more time to shape the piece. However, with the poems, they were more free-falling, the words hitting the page where they wished to and generally staying there in some form. Some of the poems are written in rhyme or with rhyming elements, and this took more thinking about, but they were generally born out of words that tumbled out rather than any great planning on my part!Writing poetry and short stories is very different in terms of how I approach the piece, yet in this book both come from a deep place of hope, the hope God imbues me with even when it hurts.

What do you want readers to get from spending time with your new book?

My prayer is that readers will get a glimpse of the hope we find in Jesus through these pieces, that they will unearth the treasures that are sometimes only to be found in the deepest darkness. I want readers to know they are not alone in their struggle, that it is okay to struggle as a Christian and that they are not somehow failing God or anybody else when life is tough. My poems and prose ultimately point to Jesus, who went through the very worst of suffering and understands our pain more than anyone else ever could, and so stands with us within our darkness, allowing his light to puncture through and flood us in his incomparable love.

PS Liz and I are both part of the Association of Christian Writers, and both write monthly posts for their More than Writers blog. Liz wrote one about how she was feeling on the eve of publication day, and I wrote one suggesting ways we can support one another as writers. Do take a look if you are interested.

Liz Carter is an author and poet who writes about finding gold in the mess of life. She lives with long-term lung disease and has written Catching Contentment: How to be Holy Satisfied (IVP) and an accompanying study course. Her new book, Treasure in Dark Places: Stories and poems of hope in the hurting, is out now and available in paperback or ebook at online stores.

Organising a funeral amidst the chaos

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A photo of mum and I, taken back in 2014 for a Woman Alive article we both wrote.

I know that I have mentioned in previous blogs that my mum died a few months ago. As it is Good Friday, and we are focusing on the agonising death our saviour experienced for us, I am taking a break from the weekly series I am currently sharing on my blog. I feel it is right instead, to lament. And, as so much of my grief has been tied up in my mother’s recent death, I am going to share more deeply about the process of planning and then going to the funeral of a loved one in the midst of this global pandemic. I know that many people are unable to be near their loved ones as they lay dying, and some are unable to attend funerals – I held off sharing because of feeling sensitive to this. However, I was specifically asked to write about my experiences – and then found I was unexpectedly left with the material available for me to use personally. I know my writing is raw, deeply personal and painful at times, but I also feel we are in a stage of collective grief and I hope and pray that my blogs today and tomorrow may help give some people voice to their grief, as they recognise some of the emotions I describe.

This year has not been as any of us anticipated, despite all the new year hype about it being a new decade. However, for my family, the change from usual routines began in January, with the news that my mum was nearing the end of her life (something we had been told for the last two and a half years could happen any time). 

I was travelling back from a meeting when I suddenly had a call to say that I needed to get down to my parents’ house as soon as possible. But then, in typical mum-style, she hung on for another ten days, during which time I was able to sit by her bedside, share with her and, in fact, finish writing the devotional I was in the process of writing. It is on loss and disappointment, which was certainly very up close and personal to me during that time (when I was asked to write it, I had an inkling that I was about to walk through personal grief – but I had no idea of the collective loss we were about to face as a nation). It was, in fact, very cathartic to write while I was with mum and, now the COVID-19 pandemic is literally everywhere, the mixture of lament and hope I gleaned from scripture seems so apt for us all.*

Ever-changing arrangements

Since mum’s death, I have been emotionally very up and down. The whole process of mourning for mum has been difficult because her death certificate was not released to us for over a month (due to complications with doctors). It meant her funeral could not take place until the end of March, which put us slap bang in the middle of the lockdown and all the other implications the pandemic has caused.

I can look back now and say I am so grateful that my mum was taken before the coronavirus broke out (as she had a lung disease so would have been super susceptible). However, I have to be honest and say there have been days when I have struggled with the fact we had to wait so long for the funeral, and the changes we had to make to it because of the time lapse. 

My mum was so organised – her funeral ideas had been penned and ready for a couple of years. But we had still gone through the agonising experiences of visiting the funeral director, choosing a venue for after the service, pulling together the order of service and inviting guests. Each of those things, when you are exhausted from being involved in end-of-life care, as well as consumed by the enormity of grief, feels like it is one thing too many. 

As the virus has spread, it has felt like each week brought with it the enormous weight of new and desperately difficult decisions to make. Sometimes the burden felt unbearable – and then simply pointless as, a few days later, the decision we had made was then made null and void due to changes to government guidelines.

One week we agonised over whether to make the funeral immediate family only. We were concerned some family weren’t sure they could travel any longer. Others had begun to self-isolate as they were high-risk. And most of mum’s local friends were over the age of 70 anyway. So we did decide to take the decision out of people’s hands, so they wouldn’t feel guilty for choosing not to come.

And then the lockdown loomed. We knew it was coming; we were just hoping it would happen after the funeral. Listening to Boris address the nation was horrific. I was literally clinging to a cushion, desperate to take in all he said and feeling more and more anxious as the announcements were all about shutting things down and staying indoors. But then came the news that funerals could still go ahead – for the moment at least. My heart leapt…but then I was left with many questions. Would the crematorium local to my parents still be allowing family to attend? How many of us would be allowed to go? Would different decisions be made in the few days leading up to the funeral, which would mean we suddenly couldn’t be there? After all, this has been such a fast-moving situation, and we’ve had to change things over and over again.

Speaking to my dad and sister, we continued with plans to bring the immediate family together, but decided to pare back the service as there would be so few of us. We may have a celebration service in the summer with those that were supposed to be with us, if the pandemic has ceased – but who knows how we will all feel by then, and how many others we will be mourning by then.

Thoughts from the eve of the funeral…

I have cried so many tears over the arrangements, and what we have had to change. But I have also reminded myself and my family that we were blessed to be able to be with mum when she made the journey from life here to life with Jesus. So many people are dying, alone, in hospitals. And I know there are those missing family funerals because they are having to isolate themselves due to symptoms. That can make me feel guilty at times, although I know that is one negative emotion I needn’t be feeling (although that doesn’t stop it).

The funeral is tomorrow and I am full of mixed emotions about it. I’m totally wrung out trying to navigate life with us all working from home; my husband and I already mainly work from home but now we have our children doing online schooling here too (just like most other families). But my husband is a pastor and so we have been navigating setting up online services, and trying to keep everyone connected. That has consumed his thoughts and most of his waking hours, so the run up to the funeral has felt pretty lonely too…

* Everyday insights into loss and disappointment is a 30-day personal devotional, being published in May by CWR.

Fighting despair

Reflections based on 1 Samuel 22:1–6; Psalm 142.

Reading in Samuel, we discover that David is running from Saul and takes refuge in a cave. He had already been anointed king by Samuel at this point, but the current king was not ready to give up his throne. It is interesting to see how God allowed David to go through this time of testing. He didn’t simply triumphantly walk onto the throne: God worked on his character through these testing times.

David wrote a few of the psalms while hiding from Saul. In Psalm 142 he is totally overwhelmed and desperate. He believes no one cares about him. And yet, even in the depths of despair, he turns to God. He tells Him how he feels. This might seem shocking – he says to God ‘no-one is concerned for me’ when obviously deep down he knows that God is. But I believe this psalm is important because it shows us that God wants us to be honest with him, in the way that David is here. Notice that he does turn things around though, and it is when he remembers where his hope lies that things change for him. As we see in verse 2 of our Samuel passage, God brings 400 men to him who form the start of his army. While he may feel he is hiding away, God is giving him an opportunity to work on both his own character and the development of leadership skills to run an army.

How do you respond when the heat is turned up in your life? Do you have a tendency to wallow in self-pity? If so, try to articulate that to God rather than keeping it inside and dwelling on it. Then remind yourself that He is the only real source of strength and hope.

I have found that I can have a tendency to get stuck in negative emotions. Learning how to lament, using the psalms as guides, has been an incredibly helpful form of release. I try and articulate all of my emotions through writing them down, and then remember God’s faithfulness to me in the same way.

For prayer and reflection: I am sorry Lord when I hide away from You, too low even to speak. Help me to lift my eyes to You, be honest about how I feel but also remember that You are my hope.

Embracing the broken

I am delighted to welcome Liz Carter to my blog, as she continues the ‘Unmasked: stories of authenticity’ series. This will be the last post before I take a little break for the holidays – but will be continuing with this series in the New Year. Liz is incredibly honest here and I resonated with a  lot of what she shared, including the pressure felt as a pastor’s wife and also feeling the need to learn to lament well…

‘How do you feel now?’

I stand there, my head bowed, my body stiff as I contain the pain raging inside. What do I say?

‘Are you feeling better?’

I bite down on my lip. ‘A little, yes, thank you.’

But inside I am berating myself. That’s not true, is it? I don’t feel a little better at all. If anything, I feel worse, the pain made somehow more obvious by the prayer. I feel just that bit smaller, that bit more invisible, the real me hiding behind the reality that once again, I am not healed. Once again, I have let somebody down, someone who wanted to pray with me, to see me set free from the pain which holds me in fierce bonds.

You see, this is my mask. This is the face I put on. It’s the face I have put on all my life, growing up with a degenerative lung disease. And it’s the face I sometimes put on with God, too.

It’s the ‘I’m fine’ face. It’s the words I say when folk ask me if I am better yet, the smile I smile when people tell me I look so well. It’s the false mask of pretence; a way to escape being too real, because sometimes it’s just too hard. Too exhausting to reveal my inner self with all its pain and loneliness, enclosed in a body which keeps me caged from the world for so much of the time. So instead of sharing my unmasked self, I nod. I smile. I’m fine, thank you.

Somewhere along the way, I learned to hide my feelings. Growing up with this disease meant that I had to put a mask on every day, to face the world, to be a person who deserved a place in the world. If I took my mask off, I thought I was showing that I wasn’t good enough, after all. That I was too weak and helpless. Too pathetic to be of use, because my body always let me down. The easiest way was to hide the fact that I was in pain. To pretend that all was well.

I started doing this in church, as well. I thought that people didn’t want to hear that I had another infection or felt too exhausted to go out of my house or that pleurisy was racking me yet again. I thought that I wasn’t displaying God’s power at work in my life if I was sick. I thought people wanted to hear bright and positive stuff.

But I was wrong.

People long to see authenticity

They yearn to see people being more honest, more open about their struggles. And when I share what I am really feeling, how I am struggling, then that brings me to a better place, as well. A place where I don’t have to pretend, anymore, a place where I don’t have to be lonely in my pain, because others have taken some of it and held it along with me.

Unmasking is scary. It’s risky. It doesn’t always go down so well, either. There have been the times I’ve tried to be more real with folk and they haven’t wanted to know. The shutters have come down, the glances over my shoulder more marked, the barriers erected. The platitudes start: ‘I’m sure you’ll be better soon.’ ‘You just need a bit of fresh air/exercise/aloe vera.’ Some people don’t want to be faced with the reality of my pain.

But there are actually far fewer of these people than I once told myself. Once upon a time, I felt I could only be open with my closest friends and family. Now, I’ve found that saying how I really feel can open conversations in the most wonderful way. I was talking to a lovely lady the other day – I don’t know her very well, so was all ready to say ‘fine, thanks,’ when the question came. But I caught myself, and told her that I was feeling fairly broken, actually, and that this year had been really bad for me, with multiple infections and a hospital admission. Instead of the conversation continuing on the superficial level it had started with, it got deep quickly, because this lady was released to speak about stuff going on for her, too. My decision to be real meant a much more profound connection. A healing conversation.

The perfect parson’s wife

I’m especially aware of this as a vicar’s wife. Perhaps there’s a script running somewhere in my mind telling me what a vicar’s wife should look like and act like, something which says that a vicar’s wife is always impeccably presented, and coolly calm and confident. I couldn’t possibly show folk who I really am, because that wouldn’t be appropriate.

I know that script is really a load of rubbish. It’s an archaic leftover of old novels I’ve read featuring distant and collected parson’s wives (we’re talking Austen and Bronte here.) It’s nothing like the reality of living life with honesty and integrity – which leads to messiness.

But messy is good. Messy is important, and real. Standing in coffee time after church with tears running down my cheeks means an unmasking which gives others permission to give of themselves, too. It means a sharing of lives marred with brokenness, an honesty about suffering which still crushes us, an authenticity about those times we just don’t get it.

Because a life lived with God does not mean a life lived without pain. And if we can learn to be honest about the pain then we can reach out to each other so much more. We can listen to one another and make the world a less lonely place, even if for only a moment or two. We can reach out and catch hold of the work of the Spirit among us as God brings healing through our willingness to open ourselves up. Even when it hurts.

We’re allowed to shout at God

I’ve had to go through a journey of being real with God, as well as with others. I got too good at pretending that everything was fine. That I didn’t mind when others were healed and I wasn’t, that I was good with it, that it was okay because I wanted those people to be happy. I told God that I was fine with my sick body if that was who I was supposed to be. I plastered a grin on my face and carried on.

Some of this was authentic. I found joy in worship, and felt that I had come to a place of acceptance of where I was. I’d lived with it forever, after all, so had known no other way, so perhaps it was easier for me than for others who suddenly get sick or become disabled. God was so much more than my feelings, and I found that I could take hold of contentment in God’s presence rather than in my circumstances.

But in all of this, I forgot to actually acknowledge my feelings.

I forgot that it is important to tell God how we feel.

I forgot about lament.

The Bible is an incredible model of how to be authentic. Right through all the books, we see broken people responding to God from out of their brokenness. We see people shouting at God, moaning, weeping, screaming. We see people battering their fists into God’s chest.

We even see Jesus in the deepest grief, sweating drops of blood as He asks God to take this great burden away from him. We see in Jesus’ desperation the most profound authenticity, an honesty not afraid to express His fears and His pain, while always saying Yet not my will. Yet not my will, but yours be done. Jesus had no need to put on a mask before His Father, no need to say that He was fine thank you, that He was really okay with what He knew He had to do.

Because He really wasn’t okay. He was sweating blood.

In the psalms, the writers so often share their brokenness in the most raw words, ragged and haunting poetry which expresses their pain. How long, O Lord, how long?… Why, my soul, are you so downcast?… Do not hide your face from me! The writers don’t hold back from God, because they know that God can take their grief and their shame, their agony and their hatred. They give us a model for how we can be genuine in our prayers. How we can share the depths of our hearts with God, even when those depths are so very dark, because there is no darkness that cannot be lit up with God’s dazzling light. Those psalmists always move on from laying out their brokenness to trusting in God, even when things look bleak. And it’s in their active decisions to remember God’s work in their life and to praise God anyway that they find their healing, that they find their mourning turned to dancing and their lives lifted from the pit.

Their unmasking leads to their healing.

This is my experience, too. Pretending does nothing, before God and before people, because pretending leads to superficiality, and there is little point to that. Honesty – even in all its raw brutality – does so much more. It lays bare truth and its vulnerability speaks to battered hearts and crushed lives.

‘Are you feeling better, now?’ the person praying asks of me.

I begin to speak, but stop myself for a second.

‘I’m still in pain. So much pain. Why can’t God take my pain away?’

And we weep together. We weep in the waiting and in the brokenness, but our weeping is seasoned with hope, the hope we both know, the reason we keep on asking.

The hope that will never let us go.

Liz lives in Shropshire with her Rev. other half and two teens. She loves writing more than most other things and blogs here. Her Bible study book about Beauty and the Beast is available here or you can get an e-copy for free on her blog. Liz’s first book is about contentment living in a broken world and will be published by IVP in 2018.

Worshipping through suffering

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general-background

Reflections based on Acts 16:16–38.

‘After they had been severely flogged, they were thrown into prison, and the jailor was commanded to guard them carefully… About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God.’

One of the Christian women I admire most is my mum. She suffers from lupus and also has rheumatoid arthritis. She finds it hard to breathe and is in constant pain. But nothing makes her faith waver – it may dwindle to a tiny flicker at times but it is always there. I find that incredible. So I don’t write about this subject lightly.

Imagine how much Paul and Silas must have been suffering, and yet they choose to praise God despite their circumstances. The result: their chains were loosed; they showed integrity to the jailer by not running away and led his whole family to the Lord. I’m not saying there will always be such a positive outcome to your pain – just that there could be. My mum has been to hospital countless times, and is usually desperate not to go in. Yet often she testifies to some ‘God-incidence’ where she was able to share with someone who was dying or suffering badly. Each time she is able to say that if she was admitted simply to speak to that person the pain was worth it. Wow. I wish I could lift my head above my circumstances more often. That is what I think the crux of the matter is. It’s a choice we make – to look at our circumstances and the physical reality and allow ourselves to slide downwards, or to acknowledge the suffering, but also choose to remember God’s sovereignty doesn’t change in the light of it.

God knows how you are feeling so be honest – but don’t stay there. The Psalms are made up of 70% laments; take a look at some. Note how, even in the depths of despair, the writers lift their eyes heavenward, speaking out truths of His greatness. For your own sake, ask God to help you learn to do the same.

Prayer: Use what Habakkuk said, even in the light of impending starvation and devastation, as a starting point for your own prayer: ‘yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my saviour’. (Habakkuk 3:18)