Brave Heart

Thoughts on the courage of lament.

I rub the silver pendant between my fingers subconsciously.

Brave Heart.

I consider how the gifted necklace is inscribed with words I often don’t feel. What about any of this is brave?

I feel weaker than I ever have, more desperate than I want to be.

I feel anything but brave.

The words I recently penned come back to me as my husband and I are talking through passages of scripture to share with our teens, encouraging them to pray the Word amidst all circumstances. Lamentations 3 is on the forefront of my mind, so I open to the page and read the words I’ve highlighted, underlined, and written beside over and over again.

I hold up the words I wrote just days ago and find their perfect reflection there.

I was tempted to delete them the day after I wrote them because they felt too raw, too vulnerable. That’s when I realize -

maybe the bravest thing I could do right now is lament.

//

Hope deferred makes the heart sick¹.

Today, hope deferred makes me feel physically ill. I feel it in my stomach as I wake up from another dream that vanished as soon as my eyes opened. I close my eyes again, trying to remember what it felt like to be living in the fulfillment of what I’ve hoped for for so long. But it wasn’t real. I open my eyes again and it’s gone.

It’s snowing outside which usually sparks little girl delight in me, but I watch the snowflakes whiz past my window and they remind me of the lives I’m watching, the families growing, always moving past me.

I wish I could write you a list of all the characteristics of God. I’ve done it before and chances are good that I’ll do it again sometime soon. I could tell you of His faithfulness and goodness. I could sing of His holiness and after awhile, I do believe it could change the heavy way my heart is sitting inside of my chest today.

But this is one of those days I don’t know how to. I can’t even get the words out. So I watch an old favorite movie until I realize I’m crying at every wholesome moment, tears of laughter morphing into tears of sorrow because I want what I see on the screen and I don’t yet have it.

I let my cheeks stay tight from the tears that have dried and wrap a blanket tighter around me. I burrow down into the corner of the couch.

This hurts, God. And I’m not even sure what you’re doing. How long? How long, how long, how long?

Today, I will let the tears flow when they need to. I will not force the words I know I could say, because I don’t have to.

I will let the Holy Spirit intercede for me, echoing the ache in my soul through the Heavens above, trusting that the God of the universe can make sense of the mess in my head.

This is one of those days I just let myself feel it. And somewhere deep down I know that even when I cry today, when nothing changes and the disappointment stays, there’s still stirring within me a well of gratitude. I can’t always feel it, but it’s there all the same. I don’t have to prove it’s existence to my Father either; He knows it too.

//

I tip my head over the edge of a different well altogether, staring down into the darkness of longing and lack and if I weren’t careful, I imagine I could tumble over and fall.

I can’t begin to know the depths of a fall like that. I pray I never find out.

I consider letting the tears that were pulsing behind my eyes yesterday flow down my cheeks today, as I sit in church pondering the painfully confusing reality of unanswered prayers.

My Father and I have history.

It’s what I cling to when the ache in my chest turns so visceral that I feel sick to my stomach; I know that I know that I know that He is still good. I know this life is not the end; this world is not my home. And I know that He welcomes my lament even still.

So when angry tears are triggered again just a few days later, I genuinely consider my husband’s invitation to tell the Lord what I’m really thinking. It feels wrong, but I’m a leaky vessel right now - nothing ever feels like enough. I’ve hidden my pain from God as if He can’t already see the turmoil within me and it’s not working. I have no good reason not to say the words out loud.

Gio asks me if he can pray and I’m tempted to tell him no. I feel like a good pastor’s wife wouldn’t say “no”, I whisper. I’m not ready to utter words of faith right now. Gio kneels before me and takes my shaking hands in his and I realize with relief that his prayer sounds a whole lot like one of David’s.

How long will you forget us, God? How long will we carry sorrow in our souls all day long?² This is all we have, this is all we can offer today. From the depths we’re crying out to you, God. Will you hear us?³ All this longing laid bare before you, our hearts split wide, our strength is failing, God. Where are you?⁴

The truth is that while I know the goodness of God like I know the scars on the back of my hands, the pain is still real.

The truth is that right now, the bravest thing I can do is lament. This requires full disclosure of the pain in my body and the preaching of Truth to my heart. When I’ve allowed honesty to bleed out of me, there is room for praise again.

I disclose it all without shame, but that is not the end. There’s no period at the end of my cries…

“I remember my affliction and my wandering,
    the bitterness and the gall.
²⁰ I well remember them,
    and my soul is downcast within me.
²¹ Yet this I call to mind
    and therefore I have hope:

²² Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,
    for his compassions never fail.
²³ They are new every morning;
    great is your faithfulness.
²⁴ I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion;
    therefore I will wait for him.”

²⁵ The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him,
    to the one who seeks him;
²⁶ it is good to wait quietly
    for the salvation of the Lord.”⁵

I will spend my whole life waiting on God, my portion and strength. But I will not spend my whole life hiding this pain from Him. I will lament, expelling the grief and allowing room for a mustard seed of faith.

His great love will not let me be consumed.

//

Brave Heart - hang on when the clouds billow in and the darkness is strong.

This one is for you.

For the weariness in your bones and the hesitation to be honest before the Lord.

For the fear that this may never end and the regular wondering.

When faced with the depth of your weakness, may His power be made perfect.

May you find His presence more comforting than anything you’ve ever known.

May you find safety within His embrace.

Brave Heart - may there be an unexplainable freedom in your lament.

May there be a quiet, constant, inner transformation in your rebellious praise. When the world’s brokenness screams of hopelessness, may you find eternal hope in our good and kind God.

Brave Heart - may His love make you braver still.

1. Proverbs 13:12

2. Psalm 13

3. Psalm 130

4. Psalm 38

5. Lamentations 3:19-26 NIV