In Search of Healing

It is hard to believe that it is already December. Once again Thanksgiving has flown by and we are already in the midst of busy preparations for Christmas. Presents to buy, houses to decorate, parties to plan for, etc. etc. And in spite of how exhausting this season of Christmas can be, I have to confess that there is something comforting about the busyness of the holidays, or about any day, really. Keeping myself busy and distracted, I can avoid having to stop and take a deeper look at myself and ask, “how is it with your soul today?” That is a tough question and I would venture to say, most of us don’t dare stop and ask ourselves this because we are perhaps quite afraid of the answer. If we stop long enough to let our souls speak to us in the silence, think of what they might say- I am lonely. I don’t feel that I am enough. I am not happy. I want out of my marriage. I am terrified of what would happen if people knew the real me. I feel like a failure. I think God is disappointed in me.

         And so it is easier to stay busy, to turn to noise and distractions to keep us distanced from ourselves and these louder voices that clamor for our attention. It is no surprise that with technology and the internet on our phones, so many of us have become addicted to having something constantly at our reach to distract our minds whenever we have to wait, at the grocery store, at the doctor’s office, even when we are with other people. We are afraid of what that little voice might say to us if we ever became quiet enough to listen, and so we don’t. And yet, as scary as it may be, healing can only begin once we gather up the courage to stop and give name to the brokenness that lies so close to each of our hearts. Only then the road to wholeness can begin.

         I remember when I was a little girl my mom would always tell me it was okay to be sad, that I didn’t have to hide my sadness or be embarrassed by it. As an adult, I realize now, how often we run to other things to make us feel better immediately instead of just sitting with our sadness, even for just a little while, facing our grief, our wounds, our humanity. Instead we turn to food, alcohol, busyness or anything to escape facing the pain or sadness that lies hidden, yet so close to the surface that if we dared touch it, we fear it would overwhelm us.

         And when we finally do have enough courage to face our pain, our sense of loss, our fears, how many of us feel like the psalmist, crying out to God, “how long, O Lord, How long… Will you forget me forever? How long must I bear this pain? When will my soul stop aching?”* Perhaps, as the writer of Lamentations, we feel that God has shut out our prayers even when we call for help, that God has filled us with bitterness and tribulation and that maybe we are to blame for feeling this way, that we are being punished. We are bereft of peace and it must be our own fault. I should have known better that to open myself up to love, again. I should have been stronger, or more careful. I should have been a better wife, or a better friend. I should have worked harder. I have no one to blame for this but myself.

         Whenever we face the pain of loss or grief, our most natural response is to ask why. Our souls clamor for an answer. A reason. If I knew this had a bigger purpose then I could endure it. And in the absence of any definitive sense or reasoning behind the suffering we see in the world or even in our own lives, we find well meaning people reciting kind phrases that don’t really seem to help much in the current moment: “don’t worry, everything happens for a reason”; “I guess God must have needed another angel”; or “God is just testing you to make you stronger.”

         I remember a seminary professor of mine telling us a story of a couple in a church he once served. The wife had been estranged from her parents ever since she and her husband had been married due to misunderstandings between her parents and husband. Tragically, several years later, within a few months of each other, both her husband and her father both died due to a car accident and a heart attack. In their grief, she and her mother, now both widows, were able to reconcile their differences and became close once again. The wife told her pastor, my professor, many months later, “I guess that’s why my husband and dad had to die, so me and my mom could have a relationship again.” Unfortunately, he said, all too often, our tendency is to mistake the consequences of suffering for the cause of suffering. When we see the good things that God has been able to redeem out of our pain, we assume that God caused our suffering in the first place in order for those things to occur. But as the writer of lamentations reminds us, God does not willingly afflict or grieve anyone.* We live in a broken world and as a result of that brokenness we will inevitably experience pain, immeasurable grief, and hopelessness from time to time. Our promise here is not that God only causes bad things simply so that good things will happen eventually, but that there is no situation beyond the scope of God’s healing and redemption. No matter what pain we are facing in our lives, there are always these two words: “and yet”… The writer of Lamentations says, “my soul is continually bowed down in me… and yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope. The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. ‘The Lord is my portion,’ says my soul, ‘therefore I will hope in him.’

         We are not promised a life without pain, but we are promised a life of presence, a savior that decided to become Emmanuel, God with us, to walk in our grief, to experience our wounds and our pain. To cry the same tears we cry and to sit with us until the morning comes, no matter how long that takes. This is why we grieve with hope. This is how we have the strength to face those hidden wounds that we too often run away from. Because God grieves with us and walks with us; and will continue to do so until the pain subsides. God is still at work. He isn’t done yet and so neither are we.

*Psalm 13/ Lamentations 3:1-9;14-26; 31-33