Loving Lament

After concluding our three week journey into lament on Tuesday, a journey which eventuated in having an all-church lament service at Peoples Church, I have to say that I'm more impressed than ever at how important this practice is and how detrimental it is to our faith when we lose or under-use the candence of prayer known as lament.

This week, in response to an article on lament I wrote for our church email, a lady wrote:

"I am 36 years old and have been a Christian since the age of 7. I grew up in Tulsa in a preacher's, family, so I know that I am supposed to forgive. And I have forgiven -- and forgiven some more, and then more and more. But in late December, some things happened in my family that deeply disturbed me. And I started to get mad. And then I got angry and then I felt the feeling that no good little Christian should ever feel towards a parent -- hate. And, yet, I knew that, in all of this, I was supposed to forgive again, but how could I forgive when there was no acknowledgement of the sin or repentance for the sins perpetrated on myself and my brother and sister?

God has taken me from one of the lowest places in my life these past couple months to a place where I could do the grieving over my lost childhood and I could actually FEEL the anger and hurt and betrayal and abandonment that I had shoved down for so many years b/c I thought it was the Christian thing to do. Through all of this, I realize that this is the process that forgiveness is taking for me and my personal situation, but I truly believe that unilateral forgiveness is not required of us until sin is acknowledged. For me, the lamenting that I have been doing by feeling these deep emotions is part of my forgiveness process and part of my healing.

I lamented deeply, and did it with a gifted, Christian therapist who recommended a book for me to read through the process entitled: "Don't Forgive Too Soon . . . Extending the Two Hands That Heal"

Specifically it takes the reader through the five stages typically associated with grief, but does it in relation to working through forgiveness. It has prayers at the end too (such as Prayer of Examen, etc.). It's written by Roman Catholic therapists, and specifically addresses so many things I was fighting against w/r/t what the church tells you but with which I wasn't comfortable (you have to forgive no matter what, turn the other cheek, "move on", etc.), and couldn't reconcile in my heart.

Specifically the book talks about moving through the "Anger" stage of forgiveness and says that we honor our own integrity by giving anger and pain a place:

"The GIFT of Anger is that it locates our wound. Lingering anger usually indicates we moved too quickly through the forgiveness process. We believe that in an abusive situation we have no right to forgive until we have honored our anger. Anger at abuse and injustice is an expression of our integrity and our dignity as human beings. We must honor our anger before we forgive because authentic forgiveness comes from the same place of integrity deep within us"."

I thought that said it perfectly ...

After the church-wide lament service last night, Josh Lease and I were talking about how, in a paradoxical way, giving voice to our sense of victimization actually causes us to cease being victims anymore. It's a way, as one author I'm reading stated, "delimiting the experience". In other words, of saying, "Enough is enough!" It's an "expression of our integrity and dignity as human beings."

So much more could be said ... This lament business touches some really important issues

But alas ... "to everything there is an end" ... and to this as well ... One final thought:

Lament is grounded is love. The Psalmists can lament because they believe that God's "hesed", his stated, promised love for Israel, obligates him to hear and respond, that it is the context of their grieving; and they actually lament because they themselves love God and trust him to make good on his promises.

Is it possible that our inability to rage against heaven is tied to the dimness of our love?

How sad ...

Heal our numbness O God.