The Power of Expressing Your Grief
When pain is crushing you, when darkness feels like it is surrounding you, when you are overwhelmed by the things that need to be done that you simply don’t have the energy to accomplish…what should you do?
Do you feel like something is wrong with you because you can’t feel joyful? When your heart is breaking, don’t you just want to hide until you don’t feel this way anymore?
Maybe you feel like, “Well, God uses everything for good, so I should be joyful knowing that truth.”
However, there’s this thing called lament that we don’t talk about as much that has helped me navigate my own grief.
Lament is something I had never experienced in my life until I discovered my wife’s affair and our subsequent divorce occurred. It was when I was standing in an empty home, the home that we were planning to raise our kids in, that I let out an authentic, God-honoring, non-stoic, expression of my grief.
There are many examples and Bible passages on lament; there’s even an entire book dedicated to it! Today, we are going to read and reflect on the power of lament in the book of Ruth in chapter 1, verses 12-14.
