Laying in a hot bath on a cold night in June 2004, utterly bereft of any joy, overcome with sorrow for what my life had become having lost my family, I found something I would not have found otherwise. In sobbing exhaustion, laying sodden in my bed that night, absolutely emotionally broken, still, somehow, the following morning was relief.
Nothing was changed in my circumstances. But the fact I got through that dark night spoke volumes.
I would not have experienced this had I not been truly crushed that night.
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Sitting at the end of our bed, utterly gobsmacked by news we’d never get used to, silent and detached yet also full of anguish—numb actually—perfectly speechless for the diagnosis we’d just been given, we somehow found something we wouldn’t have found otherwise.
What we learned is we coped. Later we discovered we had what was needed to cope again and again, at least as far as meeting our deceased Nathanael was concerned and enduring the sheer gravity of his funeral.
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Having been to the starkest place where hope for life was absolutely non-existent, not once but twice, both times I was given something I could not have experienced or known otherwise.
I learned a lot from both those situations, about looking for the light and the value of support and of community, in a way I could not have learned otherwise. I had to be in this brokenness to receive this deep learning. If I’d have shied away, I’d have learned nothing.
In the most hellish moment is the power and opportunity we have at no other time in our life. To learn what only true lament can teach us.
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It’s a gift to not be able to change the lamentable circumstance, for all that remains is the wisdom to sit in it and allow it to take us to the support we need.
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Notice now, however much you have, however much you’re achieved, however much notoriety you’ve earned, there’s always something more you strive for. The core lesson of our humanity is we’re not able to be present because we crave something else, better, in the future.
The future present is what we work hard to be in.
Yet, the secret of life is nestled in the present that we can’t get out of. The peace is right there, where we have no control when we desperately want to control the situation. It’s an outright spiritual paradox. That peace we seek is IN the pain, or in the moments after we know we have endured it. If this has not killed me, nothing can. Lament is a place where only God abides, and there in the centre of it is peace; pure, unadulterated.
Indeed, we cannot find the profound, unspeakable peace that’s buried in lament if we will never lament.
The power of peace in lament is when, connected by compassion, we remain focused on the dilemma we’re in, the truth of it I mean; it’s there that we can find a place of accepting it as it is.
If we can sit in loss and not need to change it, something changes within us, and suddenly we have the capacity to bear what we never thought we could. We begin to grow. We begin to become overcomers.
What we all secretly crave are opportunities to overcome what would otherwise seem impossible. To sit in the pain of loss and not seek some form of distraction or escapism or unmitigated aggression; this is some form of miracle overcoming what seems impossible—to prefer lament over a form of denial or rage.
Healing gets no more complicated than this: stay in that pain, face it, and the peace that transcends our understanding will heal us. Cry the tears, be broken by the sorrow of it, healing then abides.
Usually, we require a lot of support during such a process but the journey into pain is solo; keeping safe and wise ones connected is essential for the journey, however.
The fact is any of us can do it. Try it and see.
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