Searching for a Teacher in the Practice of Lament

In response to last week's ramblings here on this blog, I had several people ask me if being around anything and anyone baby-related was painful for me. Yes. It is. Not entirely painful, not exclusively painful, but yes, it hurts on some level. So well-meaning people suggest that I should avoid babies and pregnant people and children and whatever. I appreciate the compassion behind this suggestion. But I'm uncomfortable with it on two levels.

The first is because it assumes that pain is the only or even the main emotion I feel. This isn't true. Yes, there was a moment while listening to my friend's childbirth story this weekend when I felt like I couldn't breathe I was so envious and sad. But it was also fascinating to hear her share about becoming a mother and a sincere joy to celebrate her new daughter with her. Yes, my heart broke last week watching Todd play with maybe the world's cutest toddler, but laughing and cuddling with this kid came from genuine affection and delight in his little existence. If I avoided these situations to protect myself from the pain, I would have missed all of this good.

Which brings me to my second problem with the suggestion that I should avoid situations that may be painful. Pain is not the enemy. But man, do we ever twist and turn and scheme and contort ourselves every which way to avoid it. May I humbly suggest that the Church is especially guilty in this regard? I read recently that 70 percent of the Psalms are songs of lament. Any guesses on what percent of the top 150 songs in the CCLI catalog (where most churches get their songs) are laments? Yep. Zero. 

We will all experience pain. But rather than running from it, denying it, escaping it, or drowning it, what if we learned to embrace it? What if we created sacred spaces where we could sing songs asking "how long until you do something here, God?" right along with our songs declaring that "nothing is impossible for Him?"

What if, along with the spiritual practices of praise and thanksgiving, someone taught us the practice of lament? 

It is good and holy to come to God with our declarations of God's goodness. But what do we do with our longings unfulfilled? What do we do with nagging questions that just won't go away? What do we do with the moments that feel like a sucker punch to the gut?

Why are we so insistent on getting people to feel better and move on when maybe what they really need is time to reflect, wrestle, mourn, and grieve? Especially when our experience bears out over and over again that we learn our best lessons in pain? Given that it's a pretty safe bet that we'll all experience grief at some point, why do so few of us know how to grieve well?

I am not suggesting that we wallow in pain. I am only asking how we will ever be healed without finding a holy place to bring our junk into the light. And suggesting that if perhaps we knew sacred ways of acknowledging pain, we wouldn't be so insistent on avoiding it in the first place.

We did something scary in the college class at church yesterday. We've been focusing all summer on the Love of God. We've read the gospel of John and now we're deep into John's letters. The apostle John was beautifully obsessed with the Love of God. It's been awesome to spend so much time talking about God's love for us and how we're called to love each other, but yesterday I raised this question: Is there anywhere that you don't see God's love? In our discussion the students shared a few places they struggle to see any love at all: girls enslaved in brothels in Cambodia; the reaction of some Christians to the LGBT community; their parents' divorces; their own deep loneliness. We had a time of prayer at the end of class, where the students took the courageous step of writing out their laments and their questions to God and then placing them on the little altar we made out of folding chairs and a tablecloth.

I don't know how to grieve well but I think we might be on the right track when we start being honest.