The Lost Art of Lament

Lament: To mourn aloud. To express sorrow, mourning, or regret for often demonstratively, to regret strongly, a crying out in grief.

I believe I’m grieving.

As odd as it sounds, I want to lament.

A season of sorrow crept upon me and coiled its way around my heart.

From:

• watching family and friends lose loved ones

• to remorse over past failures

• to fear over potential failures to come

• to the lack of love and empathy I see and read

• to the loss of relationships I hold dear

• to the fear of disappointment, or worse yet betrayal, from those I’ve entrusted my loyalty to.

I find myself, after years of a calloused heart, mourning.

Yet I want to lament.

The best example I can think of is from a time when I was in my mid to late 20’s. I had, for all intents and purposes, shipwrecked my life. I knew how I got to the point where I was, I just couldn’t believe I was actually there. I don’t want to glorify sin so suffice it to say I was never so low as that point. Yet I had little fear of the real danger I was in at the time. I just had an overwhelming dread that life was not supposed to be this way. That I was not supposed to be this way. That the world I knew and the person I turned out to be was broken. But my father… My dad and I were not as close of friends as we had become later in life, yet he knew I was in a bad way. He sought me out and found me. When he did, I held him tighter than I ever held any one in my life. I sobbed. He spoke softly to me - kinder than I had ever heard him speak before. He reassured me that things would be alright. That WE would get through this. The more tender he spoke the more my sobs turned into uncontrollable wails.

I did not care what I looked like.

I had no care who heard me.

I did not care what anyone thought.

I truly lamented life, the person I’d become, the damage I had done.

The only words I could say in that moment, over and over was, “O’ God I’m sorry”.

It’s one of the most childlike memories I have - coming from me as a truly broken adult. When I finally pulled away from my dad, wiping tears from my eyes so I could look at his face, this man who I was terrified of most of my life - who I had barely seen smile a day of his life - had the softest look of true love and concern in his eyes I had ever seen. It was then that I knew things were going to be alright. It was then I knew that there was no denying that I was broken, but I wasn’t beyond repair. That I wasn’t out of reach of hope. It was as if my body and soul needed the travailing of pain and flood of tears only available through the contrition of deep lament to push out despair and cleanse years of accumulated sin. It was only then could I see clearly to find hope and move forward. It was only then, born out of the weakness of despair, could I borrow the courage and strength of my father to break free of the sin and circumstances that enslaved me and specifically address the damage I’d done to the people left in my wake - publicly and privately.

As of late…

When I look out at life, I see brokenness.

When I look inside, I feel broken.

In the words of my wife, “I see the toy in you”.

I fear when I look inside, I’ll see “the toy in me” … and I don’t want to play.

We play with words like they are fickle things: love, sorry, faith, friend and as of late the word lament.

I question if we really know what these words mean, not a head knowledge but down to the bone, into the essence of our soul what they entail. What they cost.

I fear we can have a church on every corner, a half a dozen Bibles in our home, a world of knowledge at our fingertips but remain powerless to affect change because we don’t have the foggiest idea of what it is to be truly broken and lament before God and our fellow brothers and sisters.

Yet I hope. I believe it is possible for us to turn this world upside down once again. I think Jesus ask us to come with a childlike faith for a reason.

A faith that:

• keeps asking

• keeps knocking

• keeps believing

• keeps begging

• that ask for anything and everything believing that all things are possible

• that wails

• that sobs

That pitches a fit not caring who hears or who sees because it’s that childlike approach that moves the heart of God. And I think, looking out at our current landscape, moving the heart of God begins in the fertile soil of true lament.

Though it’s going to hurt. Though there are going to be ugly tears. I want to lament.

I want to lament because I believe on the other side, I will be looking into the soft eyes of a loving God who will reassure me that everything is going to be alright, and We are going to get through this together.

I want to experience the miracle of the finite moving the heart of the infinite.