It has been my practice the last few years to post on
Facebook something for which I am thankful, every day during the month of
November leading up to Thanksgiving Day.
I didn’t do that this year. It’s been a demanding year for us, and I
have dutifully tried to practice gratitude in the midst of those demands, but
the words get stuck in my throat and don’t make it down my arm to the computer
screen. When I have tried, the words
have felt forced, compelled, not without meaning but perhaps without
sincerity: words I should mean but could not feel.
I felt like a fraud.
Maybe, occasionally, you have experienced something
similar.
Amidst my first world comforts, and growing more and more in
my understanding of the sufferings of others, both here and around the world, I
felt mostly—guilty. Guilty for allowing
my own suffering to prevent me from expressing gratitude. Guilty for even thinking that my discomforts
amounted to suffering. Guilty for not
being able to summon up compassion for the suffering of others on demand. Guilty for the resentment that sometimes
bubbled up when I was called on to serve in ways that I had not foreseen.
Guilt is a terrible motivator. It just made me feel worse that I couldn’t
summon up even a dutiful gratitude.
Some days I couldn’t even form a charitable thought towards suffering
people in my immediate circle of influence, even though my own discomforts pale
in the light of their experiences. At
times, I thought I could just not bear to hear one more story of loss, illness,
reversal of fortune, or disappointment.
And that’s before I even heard the news:
human trafficking, Ferguson, corporate greed, hit-and-runs, abducted
children, school shootings very close to home, and you know the list goes
on. And on. And on.
Many years ago I was in the hospital after a miscarriage at
sixteen weeks of pregnancy. I was
devastated. I couldn’t sleep, and a
night nurse who wasn’t too busy came to my room and let me talk for a
while. At first, I was grateful for the
opportunity to process aloud with a compassionate listener. But then she said the words that gutted my
right to be devastated. “At least.” As in, “At least you’re young; you can have
another baby.” Yes, ma’am, let me get
right on that. Really? I shouldn’t feel sad about losing this baby because someday I will have
another one? Could I please be allowed
to mourn this loss first?
I read an article recently that said that a meaningful gesture
of compassion never begins with the words, “At least.” At least you have a job. At least you have a home. At least you don’t have cancer like these
other people. “At least” shuts down
compassion, shuts down conversation, shuts down our right to have feelings of
any kind. “At least” says, “You should
be grateful in spite of your piddly little problems.” It says, “How dare you think that you have it
bad?” “At least” rushes us from our
experience of current loss or hardship or disappointment or mourning to
acceptance. To the future. To a brittle but false contentment.
I realize now that, although I would never say “at least” to
a suffering friend or parishioner, I have been saying it to myself.
I have been telling myself that I have no right to consider my own
sufferings because “at least . . .”
“At least” rushes us past lament.
The Bible contains many, many commands and reminders to
express gratitude. But it also contains
many examples of lament. In seminary,
when I was studying the wisdom literature of the Old Testament, one thing I realized
was that the books of Job and Lamentations—expressions of lament easily
recognizable to even a casual reader—were written as poetry. The writing of
poetry (good poetry, anyway) is not, after the first impulse, a spontaneous
activity. It takes time, revision,
careful attention to every word, a consideration of the range of meaning,
rhythm, sound, effect on the reader.
Lament was encoded. Suffering people didn’t just sit down and
vomit out their thoughts into a journal and call it poetry. They considered it, mined it, lingered over
it, pondered it, contemplated it, sat with it, attempted to make meaning out of
it. Lament was crafted.
Biblical lament is given to us as a model. We are meant to practice lament, the same way we practice thanksgiving and prayer
and praise and service and justice and mercy and humility and compassion. When we rush past lament on our way to
thanksgiving, our gratitude becomes cheap and artificial. At least mine does.
I need to spend time looking at my losses and heartaches and
life demands and fatigue and disappointment and confusion and weakness and
inadequacy in the face. I don’t have to
make meaning of them. I don’t have to
resolve them. But I’m pretty sure I do
have to acknowledge them. I need to
honestly lay them in all their ugliness at the feet of the God who knows it all
and say, “There it is. All of it. I don’t know what to do with it. I don’t like the way I feel. I don’t like that I’m not strong enough to
deal with it on my own. I don’t like how
petty I feel. I don’t like suffering. I don’t like feeling guilty. I’m ashamed that I would prefer an easy
life.” And finally, because I’m starting
to remember how God has worked in my life before, “Maybe you can do something
with it. Maybe you can make something
out of it.”
And when I do, God sometimes opens my eyes to see the little
slivers of light, of his goodness, of his presence that have been there all
along—the small graces that soften the edges of hardship. The wheelchair that just happens to line up
perfectly with the height of the bed.
The job that I didn’t want where I am valued and respected. A tangible, unexpected reward for service
rendered years ago. A home that delights
us after we were forced to move. Ministry
colleagues with whom we find safe space to lament. I am finally able to say, “Thank you,
Jesus.”
I recently read the book Unbroken
by Laura Hillenbrand, the true story of Louis Zamperini, an Olympic athlete
whose plane crashed into the Pacific Ocean on a rescue mission during World War
2. He survived an unprecedented 47 days
aboard a life raft, was eventually captured by the Japanese, and was singled
out for untold abuse, torture, and deprivation.
It’s a story of almost unimaginable suffering. And yet, small graces were evident throughout
his story. His life raft was strafed by
a Japanese fighter pilot, and although the raft was damaged extensively,
neither he nor the two other Americans with him took a single bullet. When their raft hit the equatorial doldrums,
he experienced a heavenly choir of what seemed like angels, which brought him unexpected
peace and the hope of a future. A Japanese
guard who had converted to Christianity under the influence of missionaries
snuck him extra food and kept away some of the more sadistic guards.
Eventually Louis was rescued, but it wasn’t
enough. Instead of leaving behind his
wartime sufferings, he had to examine his agonies square in the face before
he could call on the God of the universe to rescue his heart and soul. Although his story took him farther into
darkness that I can even imagine, at the end of it was great light and
life. He lived a redeemed life, full of
health and vigor, into his 90s, and most of his postwar life was spent in
meaningful service to the less fortunate.
Small graces helped him survive and eventually thrive.
At this time of year we
naturally focus on gratitude. Most
Christians believe in the importance of gratitude, at least on some level; I consider it a spiritual discipline. In
other words, if we practice gratitude even when we don’t feel gratitude, it
changes and forms us. We become
different people, kinder people, people with some of our rough edges sanded
down, people with eyes to see the goodness of God even amid difficult
circumstances.
But we must not pretend.
Some things remain broken, unsolvable, heartbreaking. We must not put on Pollyanna faces and force
ourselves to look on the bright side and ignore the dark side. We must acknowledge our pain, even if others’
pain seems to deserve more attention. If
we don’t, we might miss the small graces where God touches, encourages, heals, and
clears the path before us.
Thanksgiving, yes.
But sometimes we must pass through lament on the way.