Speak Honestly About Pain
It’s helpful to describe lament as going to God because of who he is—his character—and crying out to him about what it feels like to live in a broken world. Throughout Scripture we see examples of what this can look like, and it is a grace to us in our suffering because when life really hurts and when things are wrong, we are not left on our own to figure out the right way to respond.
We can ask all of our questions, acknowledge our pain, and bring it to the Lord because he is big enough for them, and he invites us to speak honestly about the pain of living in a broken world. We’re not alone in to navigate that. He is with us. And it also means that we don't need to find the answers or make it make sense before we can receive comfort, because the comfort is that we’re crying out to a God who is with us and never forsakes us.
He Always Hears
Alyson Punzi
In this poignant picture book, Jane faces challenges when her seemingly perfect life takes a difficult turn. With the help of her parents, she learns how to lament and make her pain known to God.
It’s one thing, as an adult, to understand lament and to incorporate that into our lives, but it’s another thing to help our children lament. As parents, sometimes we can be tempted to do one or two things. One would be to undermine a child’s hurt as maybe not as big of a hurt. As adults, we know how awful things can be.
The second thing that parents can be tempted to do is to try to fix their kids’ pain or to take it away. But the reality is that our kids know that our world is broken. They know that something is wrong. They know that this is not the way that it’s supposed to be. And as parents, we know that we can’t protect them from all the pain in the world. And so where does that leave us?
We don't need to find the answers or make it make sense before we can receive comfort.
It means that we can walk alongside our children as they grieve and as they experience pain in this world, and we can model and instruct them in lament and give them a language, hope, and comfort when they face pain. When our kids are hurting, when something happens, we can say, That really hurts. We can tell God how much it hurts because he made us and he saved us. We hope in what is true. He promises that one day what’s broken he’ll make new.
We can encourage our children that God is with them and he always hears their cry. The comfort that we offer our children is the same comfort that we experience as we face difficult things.
Alyson Punzi is the author of He Always Hears: A Story of Loss and the Hope of Things Made New.
Alyson Punzi (BA, Cedarville University) is an author passionate about discipleship and theology. She became a pastor’s widow when her husband, Frank, died suddenly of leukemia, and she now writes on lament, grief, and single motherhood. Alyson and her daughter, Lois, live in small-town Ohio.
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