“[L]ament is about calling out the elephant in the room. We all have an elephant—at least one—and some of us have been herding elephants around so long they’ve multiplied and are now mulling around the entirety of our interior living space. Our elephants: the things we don’t want to think about or talk about, the injuries we blame God for because God could have prevented them, the horrors at the hands of others that seeped under our skin and haunt us months, years, even decades later, despite our best efforts to “get over it.” This is where we begin, by looking at these festering wounds and refusing to turn away. By coming clean. By insisting we not talk about anything else until we have talked about that. By raising our voices in lament. Lament is one of those words we think we know the meaning of until pressed to define it, and then we hem and haw and trip all over ourselves in a vain attempt to say something crisp and meaningful. It took me a while to construct a definition I could live with, and this is it: Lament is the act of pouring out in thoughtfully crafted, brutally honest speech all the accusatory, self-serving, pain-drenched thoughts and emotions that fester in the deepest recesses of my soul when God doesn’t come through for me in the way I believe He is supposed to.” ― Karen Dabaghian, A Travelogue of the Interior: Finding Your Voice and God's Heart in the Psalms How does this definition land with you? We tend to want to even *lament* in ways that look good or pretty or right, huh?. What is it like to open up to the rawness of this kind of lament described here? Trusting that God doesn't need us to package our pain in theologically correct language. That when we pray in lament, like the psalmists, it's *meant* to be messy and real? Consider: what are your "elephants in the room"? Perhaps those are the places your psalm-writing this week needs to visit, holding those things *with* God instead of alone.

Posted by Jamie Bonilla at 2021-11-12 15:17:32 UTC