7 stories to help us retrieve lament with Jesus this Holy Week

Lent, MembershipsTamara Hill MurphyMarch 25, 2021Retrieve Lament 2021

Practice lament with me this Lent and feed people in Austin at the same time

Our congregation is practicing lament this Lent. Our pastor (who also happens to be my good husband, Brian) recognized that all of us are carrying the weight of accumulated loss and needing to learn how lament is both an act of worship and a gift for our own souls. We’re also reading W. David O. Taylor’s excellent book Open and Unafraid: The Psalms as a Guide to Life which points us toward the Psalmist as our model for expressing the full range of human emotion in the presence of God.

I feel compelled to look deeply into lament, beyond my preconceived notions, to grow in my understanding of lament as more than an idea but an expansive and healing language we’ve been given by our Creator. The language that Christ, in the words of the poet Rilke, came to retrieve. Like any language, we can learn just the bare minimum for survival or we can immerse ourselves in its full expression.

If lament is a forgotten language for most of us, how have we been expressing our sadness, anger, and grief, and depression up to now?

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Into Your Hands, I Commit My Spirit by Kimberly McHugh [Retrieve Lament 2020]

My grandson lived; he lived for 6 ½ years. We got to know him and love him deeply. I spent many hours leaning over a hospital bed, watching him, and praying for him. We exchanged goofy face pics and sweet voice messages from long distances. He called me Nana, and I can still hear his voice saying, Naa naaa’, in his slightly reproachful tone and grinning face, in response to something silly I did. I wear a shirt he loved because it has rhinestones and sequin embroidery and I can still feel his hands tracing the letters of “Istanbul” on my shirt. And then, quite suddenly Yahya died. I stood by my daughter’s side as she and her husband buried his ashes. …

Where is that peace that passes understanding, where are you, God? And I long for what ancients say can come after the wall: to know God’s sweetness and love, to have peace and rest, and a deep inner stillness. I am almost ready again to say, “Into your hands I commend my spirit”, and I believe when I do, I will pass through the wall to a sweeter knowledge of Him.

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Into your hands I commit my spirit: Erin Ware [Retrieve Lament 2019]

I kid you not, there was a time, not long before all of this happened, that I thought that “the worst thing that could happen” would be my car breaking down, because I was very financially vulnerable. Then, almost like a joke, my car was stolen, and I couldn’t replace it. (Spoiler alert: I got through it.) The truth is, for most of my life, losing my mom would have been the worst thing that I could imagine—and then that happened too. I don’t want to think about what my “worst thing” would be now. All I know is, through it all, I have come to realize that there is life after death in more ways than one.

Our favorite Lent devotionals and online resources

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I thirst: Brett Alan Dewing [Retrieve Lament]

It is OK to cry out to Him in my loneliness, in my frustrated sexual being, in my uncertainty, to mourn the life He called me out of, even if I find myself desiring it once more. It is OK to weep for the loss of a broken life. We must, in fact, let go of every “if” or “might have been” to truly follow Him without reservation. Let them float away like balloons, in an array of tears, offerings to Him that set us on the good path. He knows what we gave (give) up, and He can take the tears of pain and anger as we grieve our vinegar thirsts.

Why have you forsaken me?: Amy McLaughlin [Retrieve Lament]

And Father, how did you arrive at the conclusion that the way this would play out would be good for my sister and me? Why has it taken me so long? Why has it taken you so long? I felt as if God let me stand close and beat his chest with the depth of my pain. He did not waiver. He did not stop me. I felt I was to get it all out. And He was there when I settled. I didn’t have an answer. This experience became a sort of answer.

Behold your son: Walter Wittwer [Retrieve Lament]

"There is something about generational blessing that I think is important. It is a way of passing on something mystical, a deep calling another deep, a spiritual DNA of sorts. I believe all parents should bless their children and, at the proper time, all children should bless their parents. I took it upon myself to bless him whenever I saw him. I secretly hoped that he would bless me in return. And perhaps he has. As I write this, I wonder if perhaps he has. Blessings have a way of boomeranging.”

Today you will be with me in Paradise [Retrieve Lament]

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Father, forgive them for they know not what they do [Retrieve Lament]

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Retrieve Lament: Rachel Spies' mourning story

The past five years I have lived in Lent. The church calendar has ticked by but I have stayed here in the barren place, the dark place where hope is for others and resurrection is a belief but not tangible. It’s one of those long stories, too long certainly for this space, with long emotions and long components, but familiar too – grief, hurt, expectations not met, illness, grief, uncertainty, abuse, adoption, mental illness, destruction. Many families enter into these lands, and many families fall apart. We did. Some families are able to weather the storm. We couldn’t.

Retrieve Lament: Jen Thompson's mourning story

They are heavy memories. I keep them piled like discarded bricks in the back of my mind. Every now and then I try to put them into some kind of shape that makes sense, all the while knowing that there are pieces I won’t ever figure out how to fit together. Despite my faith, there was a descent to dark places. I struggled to understand the purpose of pain, of loss. I questioned God’s goodness and His love for me.

Faith was hard. Sometimes, even seven years later, it still is. There has been only one thought that has brought me any comfort some days, and it is this: I serve a God who watched His only son die.

Retrieve Lament: Natalie Murphy's mourning story

It’s hard to pinpoint the moment a dream officially dies. I know this because I still wake up each morning expecting to find myself living the super excellent fantasy life so clearly laid out in Natalie’s Plan to Be Good at Everything and Take Over the World, Probably. The Dream I once put my whole life’s purpose in is gone, like losing a friend whom I once turned to for comfort every day. The Dream was the one who woke me up and said ‘you can do it! I believe in you!’ Now when I wake up in my twin sized bed in my parents home, with no plan or purpose for the day, the Dream isn’t there to greet me. So I slide out of bed and pour a cup of coffee, my bathrobe hanging from my shoulders like a shawl of disappointment. …

The mourning isn’t over. Actually, I’m unsure if it’s even begun. Instead, I’m left only with a promise of goodness and hope, and a shield from harm. What comes next, I don’t know. But I do know what comes last, I do know the final destination for this nomad heart of mine. And for now, today, that is enough.

Retrieve Lament: Alicia Nichols' mourning story

And, the number of people who pleaded with the Father for my son (who is currently healthily crying upstairs. His life may be an answer to prayer, but that doesn’t mean he wants to take a nap). When I visited my sister’s church in Austin, TX in January of 2016, nearing 7 months and clearly great with child, the woman who came up to me and put her hand on my belly and said, with boldness, “I am invested in this child!”, I knew without a doubt she and so many others were.

Retrieve Lament: Les & Renee Aylesworth's mourning story

Yes, we strive towards some kind of new normal, but that is hard to swallow too. I think it's because we rarely believe or think that the "new normal" will last very long. We tend to think it's more like going to another country where there are different customs and languages and foods and even restrictions, and everything seems different and for the duration of your stay that is your "new normal." But you know that you will eventually come home and the "new normal" will have been temporary, and you will resume your "old normal."

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