Lament: How to Worship From a Place of Pain | Ep 48

I listened to a podcast episode that changed my life this week, and I want to spread the word. Michael Huston is the author of Even in the Darkest Hour: Lament as a Path to God. I first learned about him through his appearance on All In, an LDS Living podcast. You can find that episode here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/michael-huston-lament-a-faithful-complaint-to-god/id1439975046?i=1000654159622

I also read an excerpt of Kathryn Cunningham's book, Walking Through the Valley of the Shadow of Death during this episode. It is available for preorder at: https://amzn.to/49RjHRs.

Listen to my interview with Kathryn in episode 44 at: https://solidaritysister.buzzsprout.com/2297017/14949771-grief-community-and-miracles-with-kathryn-cunningham-ep-44

Thank you for being part of the Solidarity Sister! community. We needed you!

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The Solidarity Sister! Book Club has begun and runs through the end of May. We're reading Brené Brown's Gifts of Imperfection over a period of 15 weeks, and connecting via Zoom and Marco Polo. Find more info in the FB group. Sign up at https://forms.gle/ZHpfhd8hwCpw6NL2A

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Transcript

Kristin: 0:07

Hello and welcome to another mini sode of Solidarity Sister with Kristin Wilson, where we continue on in our quest to cultivate our community building skills and lean into meaningful friendships. Self care and self love are at the heart of community building, so we're also exploring how to care for ourselves so that we can better connect in relationships. We weren't meant to do life alone, and I'm so glad you're here to do life with me. This week, my dear cousin in law shared an episode of the All In podcast on Facebook that had hit her deeply. The All In podcast has been around since 2018, but I think this is the first time I've listened to an episode. All In refers to the premise of the podcast, which is to explore what it means to be all in the gospel of Jesus Christ. This minisode definitely reflects my Christian experience, but if you have a belief system where you pray or connect with the divine, this life changing message will still resonate. And if you like to learn about what others believe and how they keep on in the face of trials. You'll also find value here. Amy lost her brilliant and beautiful young teenage daughter to cancer last year. I marvel at the grace and faith she has exhibited all the way through the process, from diagnosis, to treatment, to the funeral, to continuing to press forward and honor her daughter. Even still, I can only imagine the depth of her grief. God is a God of miracles, but we certainly don't always get the miracles we've prayed for. I've been on a quest to see the miracles that are still before me, even as I am praying for a miracle that may not be mine. I've poured my heart out in prayer through things that have cut me deeply, but honestly, I've struggled with self judgment at the times I feel unable to show up in praise and Thanksgiving. Life has presented so many challenges to me, despite my desire and all my efforts to be honest and kind. I'm the type of person who goes back into the store if I get to my cart and realize I have accidentally taken an item without paying for it. I am far from perfect, but I come to life with good intentions. I know in my head that being a disciple of Christ never included a promise that life would be all roses and rainbows. But sometimes, my heart feels like it should be. Like if I'm doing my best to live by the Spirit and repent when I fall short and recognize what I've done, that I should experience only joy. But this is not the experience of the prophets we read about in scriptures. This is not the experience of our Savior, who suffered for all our sins and sicknesses and sorrows, who was spit upon and beaten and betrayed. by one he loved and denied by another of his beloved apostles. In truth, this is not the experience of some of my most favorite people who have been through deep, dark trials and come out even more incredible on the other side. So why would I expect my life to be any different? I have this theory that each person has an invisible bucket. Every struggle and trial you go through enlarges your bucket. People with relatively easy and charmed lives are small bucket people. Those who have been through the ringer have larger buckets. The magical and amazing thing about these buckets is that the size of your bucket also determines your capacity for joy, empathy, and compassion. If you leave your bucket full of the hard stuff and don't do the personal healing work you need to do surrendering it all to the divine, along with whatever therapies or healing modalities work for you, your bucket stays full of the tough stuff. But through your healing, the bucket empties and becomes open to so much goodness. With that joy. Peace, compassion, and empathy that would not have been available before your trials. In behavioral science terms, this would be called post-traumatic growth. Post-Traumatic growth doesn't happen for everyone, but it does for those who do the healing to empty their buckets. One of the most. Beautiful parts of post traumatic growth is that it puts us in a position to serve and help others who may be walking through challenges we have already overcome. And we can learn to seek out those who are ahead of us in the struggle when we're going through it. This is the power of community. So back to this all in podcast episode, this was an absolutely life changing message for me. The guest was Michael Huston, the author of Even in the Darkest Hour, Lament as a Path to God. The book description reads, For many of us, faith and hard work are often seen as the keys to overcoming challenges. But what does it look like to stay faithful when"more faith" and"more work" do not make things better? What does one say when one cannot express praise? How do we maintain connection to God from within our pain? In Even in the Darkest Hour, Michael illustrates how a close relationship with God is premised on authenticity, including sincere, faithful expressions of our frustration, anger, and pain. With captivating insight and drawing from a rich scriptural history, Michael helps us to understand that lament, faithfully taking our complaints to God, Has the power to transform us, our families and our communities by anticipating deliverance and opening the possibility for newness in our lives. In this episode on the All In podcast, Michael talks about sitting in a class at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, DC. He was floored when he heard his teacher say these words."Lament is faithfully complaining to God." The teacher went on to say lament is the way you worship God from within pain. Michael describes the feeling he felt that day as exhaling a breath he had been holding for a very long time. A quote from Michael,"Lament, in a sense, is the most sacred of offerings. It's those moments when we are most vulnerable, most exposed, most uncertain. When our legs are the shakiest, we're taking that and we're saying, God, This is all I have left." I started listening to Michael's book yesterday after finishing the podcast and I feel like I was given a priceless tool for deepening my relationship with God. Lamenting and complaining or murmuring are not the same. Murmuring comes from a more prideful place where we show a lack of trust for God. We're not talking to God. We're talking about God. And as the podcast host on that episode said, it's like we're talking about God behind his back and not in a great way. Lamenting shows our deep trust in God and our absolute faith in God's love for us. We are sharing with him our deepest, most vulnerable fears and heartbreaks and disappointments and asking him to hold them. Murmuring separates us from God. Lament draws us closer to God. I spent a lot of my life feeling like my prayers needed to always be heavy on the thanksgiving and then be a little bit about asking for God's direction or blessings. As I've gotten older, my prayers have evolved, but I don't know if I've ever felt like it was okay to just go to God, pour out my pain, and say I have nothing left without ending in a place of gratitude or praise. Thus this concept of lament is absolutely mind blowing to me and also a gift. God wants us to come as we are. He'll lighten our burdens and walk us through the uncomfortable life experiences which can serve to refine us and make us more Christ like. If we continue to go to him in partnership and walk in the truth and light we have received, how can he share those burdens if we don't drop them at his feet? This is how lament is a form of worship. It is a way of saying, God, I am completely undone. As my friend Catherine recently said in episode 44, where we talked about the loss of her son, Dallin.

Kathryn: 9:40

And just. Really, like, got the feeling like my heart is not big enough for everything I'm required to feel now. Just when I would pray, just like, God, my Heavenly Father., make my heart big enough because I just, like, I can't hold it all.

Kristin: 9:55

If you haven't listened to that episode yet, do yourself a favor and make time for it this week during a walk, a drive, or while folding your laundry. It's full of hope. Miriam Webster says that lament implies a profound or demonstrative expression of sorrow. And I'm here to spread the word that God is strong enough for your lament. He is waiting for your lament. He wants to hear from you every day, in your joys and your sorrows. So while there is absolutely a space for praise and thanksgiving, and I find a lot of power there. I am so relieved to find a means to give my personal grief to God without shaming myself for not being grateful enough or faithful enough. I felt like maybe I wasn't really living up to my blessings or being a stalwart disciple when I was deeply grieving over some devastating trials that I faced. But actually now I can see myself in a kinder, more gentle light. And maybe by listening to this, You will extend yourself the same grace and use the lamentations of your heart to bring you closer to God. Now, for whatever reason, I feel the need to include my thoughts around the phrase, Everything happens for a reason. Yes, there is a reason for everything, but sometimes that reason is that we live in a mortal world. Sometimes the reason is that someone else used their agency in a way to hurt us. God is not orchestrating pain for us, but he does allow us to walk through this imperfect world and will absolutely create beauty from the ashes, whether we started the fire. or someone else did and we were an innocent victim. With permission, I want to share a passage from Kathryn Cunningham's book, Walking Through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Chapter 3, Expect the Miracle I am a religious person, and in times of tragedy, religious people are fond of saying, Everything happens for a reason. I don't want to make anyone feel bad who has said this to me. And if this phrase gives you comfort, I don't want to take that away from you either. But I don't think those words are quite right. I don't think they tell the whole truth. They imply that God is causing bad things to happen to us, that he planned it all out and made it happen for the sake of his eternal lesson plan. And that's just not true. God didn't push Dallin off that slide. He wasn't lying in wait for the perfect moment to nudge him over the edge at just the right angle so that his head would hit the frozen ground and his brain would be damaged beyond repair. God didn't kill my son. Not for a million good reasons would he be capable of such a thing. God is our Father and he sent us out into a world that is dangerous and unpredictable Knowing that sometimes bad things will happen to us. I am a mother and every day I send my sweet children out into a world that is dangerous and unpredictable, knowing that sometimes bad things will happen to them. As parents, why do we do this? Why don't we lock the doors, bat up the windows, and encase our children in a world that is only love, only safety, only protection. Why do we put them through it? Why do we take the risk? We do it, of course, because we love them. We know they can't have a full life locked in a basement. We know they can't become their best, truest selves if they never leave the house, no matter how much love and attention we give them. Everything worth having requires a risk, and we take that risk so our children can truly live. It's the same with our Heavenly Father. Of course, the difference between us as parents and God as a parent is that He is all powerful. The Scriptures are full of stories where God intervenes miraculously in the lives of His children. In The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints, we teach that those miracles continue today."God hath not ceased to be a God of miracles", the scriptures say. Our prophet, President Russell M. Nelson, said to us recently in a worldwide meeting of the church that we should, quote, seek and expect miracles, unquote. The day before Dallin's accident, people at church couldn't seem to stop quoting that talk. I kept hearing it mentioned over and over from so many people that I went home that day convinced that the Holy Ghost had brought that phrase to my attention on purpose. I wrote in my journal about it that night. I had all kinds of theories about what God wanted me to learn and what he might be preparing me for. The next day. I stood on the elementary school playground, praying for a miracle. Kathryn did not receive the miracles she asked for, but in her book, she outlines 13 miracles she did receive. I'll include a link in the show notes for her book, as well as to Michael Huston's. And to the podcast episode that inspired this mini sode. We experience life in seasons. If this is a season of hardship, I pray that this tool of lament will bring you closer to God. And if you're in a season of plentiful harvest, tuck this lament concept away for the day that you need it. And also, Think about how you might sit and listen to the laments of your friends in their struggles without judgment and without trying to fix them. Holding sacred space for someone else to just be might be the greatest gift we can offer another human. Thank you so much for listening and supporting me as I try to follow God in faith by doing this podcast and pondering what other offerings I could create to compliment this podcast and help in the mission of empowering women with more tools for building community. In case you didn't know, we have a Facebook group full of incredible women. I'd love to have you join us. Link is in the show notes. Thank you for being part of the Solidarity Sister community. We needed you.