What Do I Do With My Sad Story? This!
I’ve just finished leading a Nearing God Retreat in Indiana. We wrote, sang, prayed, danced and worshipped our way through the Psalms. But we cried too. None of us wanted to cry—who wouldn’t rather laugh and sing? But we couldn’t avoid them---the lament psalms and our own sad stories. (The stories among us included cancer, estranged children, divorce, abandonment, the murders of loved ones . . . )
You have them too, stories and losses that darken your hearts and memories, that shadow this year, even this day. (Even the creatures around us mourn . ..)
Every week someone in my memoir masterclass asks, “My story is no fairy tale. Does the world really need another sad story?”
You know I’m going to say yes. Because these stories, these memories don’t disappear just because we don’t speak them. Silence only feeds them darker, heavier. We must write, speak and hear one another’s stories. Every day I see healing, wisdom and even joy come to those who dare to write and share their story. I am among them.
(Here, some of my Story Leaders from my memoir class who yes, have dared to share their hard stories.)
But our deepest most honest words follow a long tradition. Three thousand years ago some people dared to pen their griefs, fears, complaints and howls. Enemies were after them. They were persecuted, maligned, sick, despairing. They were mad at God. They wrote words like these:
Lord, how many are my foes!
How many rise up against me!
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
My soul is in deep anguish.
How long, Lord, how long?
Give me relief from my distress;
have mercy on me and hear my prayer!
Through the retreat, and fresh from a dose of new grief, I’ve been living in these words these weeks. Each day I turn to a lament psalm and I’m there: anger, hurt, clenched hands, cascades of mucus and mascara . . . (Mercifully for you there is no photo for this. Let’s do a sunset instead).
It wasn’t easy at first. What, can we truly speak to our father like this? I know I’m his daughter but I’m also made of dust with clay feet and a tiny earthen tongue. How can I presume to wag my complaints to the Sovereign One on heaven’s throne? What kind of God, what kind of father would allow such audacity? My own father wasn’t interested in hearing anything from me.
But this father is different. This is a father who asks us to love him with all our heart, soul, mind and strength because HE loves us like this. And how can we do this if we cannot speak the fullness of our hearts to him, whether in love or in pain? So he invites even our ugliest guttural cries and accusations. He wants us to wail to him! And I do. (I hope you do too)
When we do this, something always changes and moves. Listen to what happened for the writers of the lament psalms. Here is how many of them end:
For you bless the godly, O Lord;
you surround them with your shield of love.
The Lord has heard my cry for mercy;
the Lord accepts my prayer.
In peace I will lie down and sleep, for you alone, O Lord, will keep me safe.
Through our words reality shifts. Our brains and hearts shift. Yes, the crisis remains, but it is smaller. Our present story of piercing and pain is now set into the grandest story of all: Yahweh reigns and his love endures forever! Lament builds a linguistic ladder between our broken reality and the reality of a loving Father who listens and responds. He is here with us even in our memories and our hardest stories to carry them, to redeem them.
Believe this. Trust this.
Know, dear friend, how much your words and your (sad) story matters! Let the Psalms give you language that leads you to freedom——and even, at the right time, joy.
(This material is adapted from Nearing a Far God: Praying the Psalms with Our Whole Selves.)