The Gift of Lament

My post from August 31, 2018...

“Mornings have been the toughest for me on the whole since Haddy went to heaven. Our mornings were filled with his giggly excitement for the day.  That could include elbows, knees, and feet to any part of your body while he climbed into bed.  It could also include fussing if we hadn’t moved fast enough toward breakfast.  That boy loved helping in the kitchen and he loved scrambled eggs.  Overall, Haddy was filled with the sweetest, bubbly playfulness in the morning.  We truly delighted in him.  Jason and I both anguish that he isn’t with us.  We feel conflicted with everything that we do these days.  Our hearts and minds are flooded with so many questions and unknowns.  We are settled though that the truth of God’s character is as steady and true as it was before Haddy went to heaven.  We may feel conflicted but He is not.”



Still true.  Mornings are brutal.  How does the sun keep rising?  My baby is dead.  I wake up with anxiety every day.  I have bad dreams nearly every night.  All of them can easily be linked to the trauma of losing my Haddy.  I’ve been told those dreams are simply my brain trying to make sense of the trauma, a symptom of PTSD.  I hate them anyway.  I dread them.  I toss and turn, my brain and body under the reckoning of the permanence of death.  There is steady healing and growing hope but grief and trauma remain and it still touches everything.  I want year two to feel lighter, more progressive than it does.  Instead, there seems to be a deeper knowing that Haddy isn’t coming home.  It’s settling into my bones.  

I can see myself working hard, focusing on peripheral things that disappeared in the beginning, and I have an awareness of the suffering of others that perhaps feels more keen than before.  Those are sweet evidence of God’s hand in healing my heart.  My old markers for perseverance, growth, and achievement haunt me in grief.  There is no resolution here, only endurance.  God Himself has given me lament, the story of His own suffering, to feast my eyes and heart on.  I need new markers, new expectations, and a new kind of patience.  This is long-suffering.  He’s knitting it into the fabric of my being.  I long to be gentle and kind as I learn these painfully.  Sometimes I just disconnect, trying to either escape from or sort the wild web of thoughts and feelings within.  Sometimes I'm agitated, anxious, and demanding.  I’m wrestling, struggling to write yet preaching to myself the truths I’ve gained thus far.  I want these thoughts out of my head, somewhere else for sorting and reflection.  They remain, tangled, bruising me at every pass.

As I look into my future, which is most definitely evidence of progress, paralyzing me still at times, I see a very long journey ahead.  I see barren land with impossible passes and it is dark.  The imagery still is the chasm of grief.  I have work to do.  It’s only begun.  My prayer in this dismal, weighty picture that remains in my mind’s eye is that I will remember Jesus, the light of the world, is WITH me.  My husband and children, they are WITH me.  Even in the midst of staggering pain that sometimes I allow to define me, I can dwell in the presence of my Savior. 

He is WITH me in the wrestling just as He was with Jacob.  He is WITH me in the furnace of affliction.  He went before me to show me how to suffer and tells me that glory awaits.  He is WITH me in my weeping and mourning.  He is WITH me in my tossing and turning.  He girds me up in my weariness.  He is WITH me when all goes numb.  He is my only hope for rest.  There are times that I want to quit, that I plead for Home, yet His steadfast love reminds me always, to live is Christ, to die is gain (Philippians 1:21).  Those words are the whisper in my head when the pleading begins that He would take me Home.  Please hear me.  I am not suicidal.  I am simply wrestling, often navigating the world with my old framework for living, breathing, and being.  He is working in me a new one as I suffer.  That takes time.  The immeasurable pain of loss is an opportunity to listen closely to the Word of God, to let the matchless love of God cover me.  It’s no secret that I feel stripped bare.  

Lament, a deeply moving tool in grief, still feels awkward and uncomfortable sometimes, like minor chords that send chills down your spine.  My prayers of lament are raw and unsettling.  They make me want for a different time only to recognize this is my real life...again.  Still, the fact that my holy God shows me how to lament with fierce boldness and raw emotion, is an awakening of sorts to the tenderness of God’s heart for His people to cry out TO Him.  He doesn’t rebuke them but He reminds them WHO He is and leads them to rejoicing.  It’s astounding actually.  In the bitterness of losing Haddy, the unceasing anguish and longing are relentless.  It’s embarrassing to say, but I have dreamed of digging down to his little body with my bare hands just to run my fingers through his hair one more time.  The desire for him is so strong it is unbearable.  I know that leaves a picture in your mind that you may not want.  I am sorry.  To say I ache for him still feels cheap.  So, I sit in the tragic, desperate longings and I plead with God, lament TO Him to make a way where there seems to be no way.  There are many things I am thankful for in grief, but the gift of lament, the freedom to bring my whole self before God leaves me awestruck.  It leads me to praise, just as He intended.

Who is this God who loves like this?  Who is He that HE should suffer so that I would know how?  Who is this man that bore sin, death, and shame in my place, so that I could learn to live again after staggering loss?  How does He love me so tenderly?  Why does He always whisper truths in my ear when I don't think I can make it any further?  How is His love so pure and true?  I'm inconsistent, sinful, anxious, demanding, raw, and completely full of pain.  Who is this God that tore the veil so that I may have access to the Father because of the Son?  Why did you do this for me?  Who is this man that resurrected from the grave, defeating sin, death, and hell forevermore?  Who is this man that reminds me I am waiting for just a little while, and that glory will be revealed(1 Peter 5:10)?  Who is this man that unites all believers to Himself for all of eternity?  I am unworthy of unceasing access to a perfectly holy God, yet I have access to bring all that I have and all that I am with raw pleading in my anguish.  It's no secret that I am undone.  His desire that I should lay myself out before Him after all that He has given to me, done for me, well that lays me out flat on my face with gratitude.  If my holy God can accept a sinner like me, messy, frail, weak and wounded, and pour out His lavish, steadfast love, I must consider that He can make good on His promises to redeem that which is broken, mend my completely shattered heart, and unite me with Himself in glory where all of my tears will be wiped away.  The road ahead may appear dismal, but may I always remember, the light of the world will carry me through.  

Psalm 56 English Standard Version (ESV)

56 Be gracious to me, O God, for man tramples on me;
    all day long an attacker oppresses me;
2 my enemies trample on me all day long,
    for many attack me proudly.
3 When I am afraid,
    I put my trust in you.
4 In God, whose word I praise,
    in God I trust; I shall not be afraid.
    What can flesh do to me?
5 All day long they injure my cause;[b]
    all their thoughts are against me for evil.
6 They stir up strife, they lurk;
    they watch my steps,
    as they have waited for my life.
7 For their crime will they escape?
    In wrath cast down the peoples, O God!
8 You have kept count of my tossings;[c]
    put my tears in your bottle.
    Are they not in your book?
9 Then my enemies will turn back
    in the day when I call.
    This I know, that[d] God is for me.
10 In God, whose word I praise,
    in the Lord, whose word I praise,
11 in God I trust; I shall not be afraid.
    What can man do to me?
12 I must perform my vows to you, O God;
    I will render thank offerings to you.
13 For you have delivered my soul from death,
    yes, my feet from falling,
that I may walk before God
    in the light of life.

Here is a wonderful article about the significance of the veil being torn in two at Christ's death.  It is a wonderful read, a very sweet help as I learn to lament.  

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