LAMENT
“what is your favorite emotion?” Brooke asked casually as we walked into Maggie’s room and our home for the next day. I was leaving Georgia to go home for thanksgiving before returning for our last 3 weeks in Georgia. Out of nowhere I hear myself say
“lament.”
Surprised with my own response, I began explaining why as if my spirit had given way more thought to it than I had. “It’s like a holy despair. A coming to the end of yourself that requires divine intervention. We see Jesus lament way more than we see him celebrate and jump around.” An afterthought I had was how we can’t choose lament the way we can choose joy. Joy is accessible no matter the circumstance, but lament is met with a lowly heart through an invitation to be understood only by Jesus. It’s not attractive or desired, but it brings intimacy and beauty with the father.
Some other people shared their answer’s and it was casual, yet something kept nagging at me as to why that had been my first response.
The next day I was on a plane back to Texas and had completely forgotten about the conversation. I opened up the book I was reading, Be the Bridge by Latasha Morrison which addresses racial reconciliation from a biblical perspective. I flip the page and you know what the topic is?
“The Bridge to Lament”
Ooookay God, whatcha doing?
The chapter goes on to say we will never be bridge builders for racial reconciliation if we don’t sit with our own complacency or ignorance and lament for the repercussions, because “Lament seeks God as comforter, healer, restorer, and redeemer. Somehow the act of lament reconnects us with God and leads us to hope and redemption.” What a beautiful purpose for an emotion that has been discarded as “unhealthy” or “uncomfortable” in our society today.
Once we landed, I got off the plane and my phone lit up with an email from Madie our mentor. “We have had 3 people test positive for covid this morning.” Shoot. I call my mom and tell her that I need to get tested ASAP, but we still had the problem of driving home for an hour and a half. I get into the car after not seeing my family for 3 months and am met with fear and nervousness as everyone tightens their mask and unconsciously scoots as far away as possible. Not the ideal reunion. My heart sinks as I want more than anything to hug my sisters tight while also knowing I shouldn’t. The tension doesn’t fade as we make the drive home and I try to face the window as much as possible. Stiff reunions, just another thing covid has claimed, add it to the list.
We get home and I am sequestered to my room and I begin to have flashbacks to the first time I had covid in July and worry I will be confined to another long 10 days in my room. The loneliness really gets to you. I leave the next morning to get tested and begin to think about missing another Thanksgiving, only this time I wouldn’t be in Guatemala, but merely 10 feet away. Nostril. Stick. Number 5 done.
The Lord has hecka favor on me, because the moment I walked in the door my mom exclaimed ‘your negative!!’ as they had called the house on my way home to report my results. Immediately the atmosphere shifted from trepidation to celebration. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case for most of my squad as over 80% of them tested positive, despite the fact that we had been quarantined on the base for the past 3 weeks. It was some intense spiritual warfare. Because there were so many people who would have to quarantine for 2 weeks, they decided to push our return date back a week. As sad as I was, I knew it would be the healthiest scenario for our squad.
The day after thanksgiving, we get a call from our mentor for a leadership meeting. It was a Friday morning and I didn’t think anything of it. She begins to explain that C squad has now started to test positive and they don’t know if it would be the best decision to come back to campus, so the risk team had decided not to allow us to return back to Georgia.
My heart sank. Not again God. Not again. Not again. Not again. So many abrupt endings I had lost count. The racers would still get to launch in January to Costa Rica, but our role as alumni team leaders was over.
“When would I get to see my girls again? Would I get to see my girls again? It was only supposed to be 6 days and now it could be over 6 months” impossible questions flooded my mind and a frustration from an unhealed wound of being sent home 2 months early from my race was freshly stinging.
I wept.
I wept.
I wept.
For my girls. For allowing entitlement to creep back in and expecting 3 more weeks. For the end of a season. For 6 days turning into a month. For unsaid Goodbyes. For the endings of so many seasons being stolen by covid in the blink of an eye. I should have seen this coming, right? The enemy only comes to steal kill and destroy. And man has he been a thief this past year.
And so, I coped. I coped by being busy and for the next week I put off bringing my sorrow to the Lord and instead filled my days with temporary satisfactions. Nethertheless, he relentlessly pursued me through other people. I had coffee with a woman one afternoon and at the end she gave me a piece of paper with a listening prayer for me. Essentially, she had gone to the father on my behalf and asked him what he wanted to say to me. Even when I wouldn’t listen to him, he pursued and made himself heard, he said.
“ ELLIE, MY DAUGHTER, you may take rest, my good and faithful servant. Please let me fill you up before you go and keep on running the race. I love you dearly, O cherished one. Rest in my love this season. I desire your heart, not your works. Remember this, always. Love, your heavenly father.”
I decided to pick up my journal for the first time in a week and rested with him. The first thing I wrote was “I have been avoiding and turning against my access to you. I repent, I am sad, angry, confused. But you are such safe hands to break in.”
He let me in, gave me his perspective, and we wept together.
Lament gives us access to a heavenly perspective we would otherwise be oblivious to. It allows our hearts to break for what breaks the fathers. It pushes us to action unlike any other emotion. And it allows us to be seen in our truest form of brokenness and need for a steadfast father.
“As Americans, we love to focus on praise, comfort, thanksgiving, and worship – anything but lament. However, there is great value to lament. Lament must never be cut off before it has run its course, but lament needs a response. That response comes from the Father above, but could it also require something of us?”
“Through lament, through the night of weeping, we can experience new joy in the morning”
I truly believe this and am seeing the fruit of lament in my raw intimacy with the Lord and his ability to meet me on my knees.
When was the last time you lamented? Wept? Cried out to the Lord to fill the cracking of your heart? He wants to meet you there. Don’t suppress. Don’t cope. Sit and receive. Receive. Receive.
El