"Do you know the most surprising thing about divorce?
It doesn't actually kill you.
Like a bullet to the heart or a head-on car wreck.
It should.
When someone you've promised to cherish
till death do you part says "I never loved you,"
it should kill you instantly.
You shouldn't have to wake up day after day after that,
trying to understand how in the world you didn't know.
The light just never went on, you know.
I must have known, of course,
but I was too scared to see the truth.
Then fear just makes you
so stupid."
Under the Tuscan Sun
That is exactly what it feels like. Like, how can your lungs keep taking in air and your heart continue beating?
“And Jacob rent his clothes,
and put sackcloth upon his loins,
and mourned for his son (Joseph) many days.
And all his sons and all his daughters rose up to comfort him;
but he refused to be comforted, and he said,
‘For I will go down into the grave unto my son, mourning.”
Thus his father wept for him.”
It seems impossible sometimes that the physical body should be able to function with the weight of great grief.
Grief is a graying process. It feels relentless. It seems unending. One day you make a little progress, and then suddenly you find yourself having circled around back to the beginning.
Which has led me to wonder, as a Christian woman wanting to live my life honoring God...
What part of grief is actually lack of faith in God?
Is there a contradiction if your eyes are fixed on Jesus but your heart is broken?
At some point does God tire of my honest pain as I hash through loss?
Are those questions a self-inflicted double-wounding? Is giving myself a hard time for natural grieving unfair?
But, still... at what point does grief become something... I don’t know... wrong?
What is the point of all this pain? And is it bad to feel it so much?
Can grief be sinful?
On the other hand, can honest grief lived out before God be worshipful? A lament that fills His nose like incense?
We pour out our miseries
God just hears a melody
Beautiful, the mess we are
The honest cries of breaking hearts
Are better than a Hallelujah"
Amy Grant “Better Than a Hallelujah”
“‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord,
‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you,
plans to give you hope and a future.’”
We love to proclaim that to the rafters. God has good plans for me! God has hope for me! Hooray!
But, we often neglect to read that verse in it’s context. It’s not an escape from troubles and heartbreak. It’s the redemption after sinning and going through discipline and suffering and in the midst of it being humbled, and turning our hearts back to Him in repentance and full submission.
“This is what the Lord says: When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my gracious promise to bring you back to this place... [For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.] Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you declares the Lord, and will bring you back from captivity. I will gather you from all the nations and places where I have banished you, declares the Lord, and will bring you back to the place from which I carried you into exile.”
Jeremiah is speaking to a people in exile, a people under the Lord’s discipline through the abuse of King Nebuchadnezzar, a people whose “wound is incurable” (Jer 30.12), who are feeling the absence of God and enduring seventy years in Babylon as the price for their sin!
Why? Because it’s through suffering, and hardship, and abandonment, and physical pain, and illness, and slavery, and victimization, and all measure of grief that our hearts cry out for HIM, for His rescue, because there is nowhere else to turn. We need Holy God after we’ve wandered into and exhausted every other form of release, relief, and sin -- idolatry, alcohol, drugs, pornography, gambling, hatred, blaming, war…
Until we’re lost in grief. Spent. Broken.
And, so, in His amazingly, loving, wonderful grace, God allows us the full measure of pain, the consequences both natural and supernatural, the vast expanse of suffering, the utter aloneness of failure until we reach rock bottom.
He allows it to hear our call, our cry for Him, to be able to respond in mercy, grace, forgiveness and redemption.
“This is how much God loved the world:
He gave His Son, His one and only Son.
And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed;
by believing in Him anyone can have a whole and lasting life.
God didn’t go to all the trouble of sending His Son
merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was.
He came to help, to put the world right again.”
John 3.16-17
So, yes, the Lord has good plans for us, BUT it’s on a road paved with hardship designed to reveal Himself to us, to draw us back to Him.
What do you think of a God who allows suffering?
Isn’t that the chief question of faith? How can God be good and yet allow, or even ordain, dare I say even approve heartbreak, injustice, and tremendous pain?
“During lament we must be the most careful
what we tell ourselves about God.”
Lorie Rees
Jeremiah says, though, that when we seek Him with all of our hearts we will find Him, the Real Him, the God who can take ALL things good and evil and bring good out of them.
He is:
The God who sees me. (Gen 16.13)
The God who cares. (1 Pet 5.7)
The God who wipes every every single tear. (Rev 21.4)
The God who has wept. (John 11.35)
And so, in His grace He will bring us back from captivity. He will gather us from the places of banishment and exile. He will prosper us, not harm us, give us hope, give us a future. Out of His goodness and mercy.
I think the key element to the question of whether or not grief can become sinful is whether or not the heartbreak produces Christlikeness and moves you towards God, towards thanksgiving, towards joy in and even for the suffering because of the good that He will bring out of it.
“Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.”
Proverbs 4.23
“... the Lord looks at the heart.” 1 Samuel 16.7b
Is it a grief brought before God in transparency and authenticity? Is it grief that still trusts that God is a good God?
Acknowledging our most tormented and ugly emotions, our anger, our suffering, our heartbreak, loss, our tortured places, our fear, to God is bold faithfulness. So, move toward God in honesty, in reality, in authenticity. He will not recoil. He won’t be angry. His heart is softened by our vulnerability. Loss, grief, pain, and suffering... They are His mercy, His Plan, His wooing of us, His breaking the vial of precious perfume, His lighting the incense to bring Him glory.
We spend so much time in tears, pouring ashes on our heads, desperate for relief. God comes in and rescues, restores, breathes life into our wallowing death, fills our hearts with joy and thanksgiving, and bestows upon us priceless treasures.
Those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy.
(S)he who goes out weeping, carrying seed to sow,
will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with (her).
Psalm 126.5-6
I love the phrase in Ephesians 1.18 “the eyes of your heart”. It means that you don’t just know in your head, but that you experientially know God. It’s an enlightenment through the Holy Spirit.
If my focus is on that which causes me suffering or grief, no, I’m not worshipping. If my focus is on God and wanting to draw nearer to Him, to be with Him face-to-face, to share every bit of life with Him, to be changed, to press through to rejoicing over His goodness, and into thanksgiving for His abundance, then yes...
It's worship.
So, cry out! Grieve before God! Bring Him everything so that you can be brought through to a place of hope, and freedom, and joy, and healing, and wholeness.
Beauty from ashes.
