I remember it so clearly and vividly because it still shows up every once in a while. It’s a feeling that wells up inside of me. I’m still walking around in the world and doing my life things, but on the inside, I want to scream. I want to scream hard and loudly enough so everyone can hear – “I’m not okay, the world is not okay, does anybody else feel this?!” I felt that way the most after spending years hiding from the difficult things in my life. Hiding from the feelings I didn’t like – mostly sadness, pain, and disappointment.
There are a lot of reasons I hid from pain, many of which have to do with myself and my personal story. I also believe that at least part of the reason I hid from my pain was that facing pain and talking about it was rarely talked about or modeled for me. “Is your glass half full or half empty?” was a common conversation growing up. The implication was always that you should have a glass-half-full attitude…no “negativity” allowed!
But life is just hard sometimes, isn’t it? No matter how much I try to shift my attitude and outlook, it doesn’t change the painful things I have had to endure. If you are my client, you have likely heard me ask you to make room for grief in your life. As a therapist, I love to help clients solve problems. I love to help clients find ways to bring more joy into their lives. But there are times when a client will bring something to me that can’t be changed – the loss of a loved one, lack of care from a parent growing up, unmet expectations for what life was supposed to look like. Sometimes grief is the only tool we have to help us endure what can’t be changed.
Thankfully, God has given us a roadmap for grief. We can find many examples in the Bible of grief or lament. Lamentations, almost half of the Psalms, and John 11:35 where it simply says that “Jesus wept.”
Let’s take a look at Psalm 13 to see what we can learn about lament:
“How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart?
How long will my enemy triumph over me?
Look on me and answer, Lord my God.
Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death,
and my enemy will say, ‘I have overcome him,’ and my foes will rejoice when I fall.
But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation.
I will sing the Lord’s praise, for he has been good to me.”
Here’s what we learn about how to lament from Psalm 13:
- Give your attention to God. The first step in all of this is to let him be a part of your grief. Let him shoulder it with you.
- Ask Questions. Grief and questions go hand-in-hand. Some of the most prominent questions tend to be some version of “Why did this happen?” “Can I trust you, God?” Acknowledge to yourself and God the questions that are showing up in your grief.
- Be Honest. The psalmist does not hold back from God. He charges God with forgetting him and hiding from him. God already knows your thoughts and feelings, so create an openness for him to share the difficult thoughts and feelings with you.
- Appeal to God. Grief comes from the loss of someone or something we held dear. In the depths of our soul, we felt that life should look a certain way. When it didn’t, we were left to a different set of circumstances that we didn’t anticipate. In Psalm 13, the psalmist appealed to God – he wanted to feel God close, he did not want his enemy to win. Be open with God about your specific disappointments and pain.
- Remind yourself of God’s promises. Even after accusing God of forgetting him, the psalmist returns to God’s promises – his unfailing love, his salvation and his goodness. Psalm 88 is the one lament psalm that does not end with a reminder of God’s promises. Sometimes I have what I call “Psalm 88 Days” or “Psalm 88 Moments” when I’m not quite ready to return to God’s promises. In Psalm 88 we see that God gives us the space to be in a vulnerable place with him. I also find that giving myself space in the anger allows me to let God be a part of all of my feelings while giving me a deeper understanding of my hesitation to come back to God’s promises in that moment. At the same time, I urge you to ensure you are moving through that space and not getting stuck in it. This is where resentment grows. Moving towards and into God’s promises is where peace lives.
Lament can look many different ways. You can write it out. You can say it out loud to God. Talk about it with a friend. You can also lament through simply reading psalms or listening to music that resonates with your grief. You can copy down lament scriptures, or just sit quietly, allowing yourself to have the experience of grief.
The point is to let yourself have the experience of grief, sadness, disappointment, frustration. Over and over again, we see that God allows people to have their process in the difficult feelings and circumstances of life. Don’t shove it down telling yourself that someone else has it worse than you or that it isn’t that bad or whatever else it is that you tell yourself. And remember that God is in it with you. He’s in the hard feelings and he’s in the hopeful feelings.
Written by Ashley Skinner, MA, APC
Woodstock Location
ashley@restorationcounselingatl.com ext 119
Ashley takes a multi-theory approach to psychotherapy. She works with individuals aged 18 and up, dealing with anxiety or depression, postpartum anxiety or depression, trauma, abuse, life transitions, self-esteem issues, and grief.