"Why am I discouraged?
Why is my heart so sad?"
(Psalm 43:5)
Why is my heart so sad?"
(Psalm 43:5)
I need to warn you at the outset that today’s devotional will be a little different from the previous ones. Up to this point, I’ve been writing from the safety of the sidelines, as an observer describing the interaction of the sheep with its shepherd, but today I’m stepping into the spotlight and getting a little bit raw.
Ever since Easter ended, I’ve been feeling a growing sense of melancholy. And I understand why it’s happening. For the past three or four weeks (I’ve lost track), I’ve been distracted from the darkness of the valley we’re in because of how hard I’ve been running. I haven’t had time to sit with the sorrow of this season because of all the preparations I’ve needed to make: get our church ready for distance worship, get my kids ready for distance learning, figure out how to do distance relationships. Each morning I wake before the sun with my mind racing, and each night I collapse into bed long after the sun has set, exhausted from my myriad tasks, honey-do’s and Zoom meetings. And for those first frenzied weeks, there was Easter looming on the horizon to sop up any spare moment.
But when Monday rolled around and Easter was in the rear-view mirror, the feelings I’d been holding at bay drew a little closer.
But how do we move on? How do we deal with the emotions that are growing within us, metastasizing with each passing day of quarantine?
Do we invent new projects in order to keep ourselves busy? That’s what I’ve been doing so far, but it’s only pushed the feelings deeper. Do we reach for the phone, the remote, the computer, the bottle, the ice cream to help anesthetize the discomfort? God knows I’ve done that often enough. But the feelings are relentless, and they always prowl at the edges of my consciousness, distracting me from being present and stealing my joy.
So what are we to do? What am I to do?
I cannot shake the feeling that my Shepherd is inviting me to do something completely unexpected, something that seems at first glance to be counter-intuitive. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. After all, He has a long track record of flipping our expectations:
The greatest in God’s Kingdom is the servant of all.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Jesus conquering our mortal enemy by dying.
And when I woke on Monday morning, long before the sun peeked its radiant head above the horizon, my Shepherd whispered another counter-intuitive idea into my mind:
"It’s time to sit with your sorrow."
What do you mean, God? Invite the prowling emotions to draw near? Acknowledge the parasitic thoughts that buzz incessantly around my head? Why would I want to do that?!
Then it dawned on me (or perhaps the Holy Spirit helped me to see): Until we acknowledge our pain, we cannot heal from it. Like a sports injury, if we don’t rest and give our wounds time to heal, they will continue to plague us, casting a shadow over everything we do.
I’ll be honest: sitting with our sorrow isn't easy. Here in the West, we have a compulsive desire to find the silver lining and then move on. It makes sense since we’re a people who want to find meaning in the messiness and make sense of the senseless.
Now, on a side note, I have a lot of hope right now, because I’ve seen some beautiful things along this broken path, and I know that God isn’t wasting this time. He has this uncanny ability to use the manure life throws at us to grow spiritual fruit in our lives.
But the emotions are still there, and if we want to heal from them and grow through them, then we need to allow ourselves to sit with them.
So that’s what I plan to do with my church community. For the next several weeks, we will be putting our previously scheduled Acts series on hold and spend some time sitting with our sadness (and all the other emotions this season is bringing up for us). This Sunday, I have a mentor of mine joining me to discuss what the Bible has to say about our sorrow. Bill Dogterom is a pastor and professor of Spiritual Formation at Vanguard University, and he’s the first person I reached out to when I realized that I wanted to learn how to grieve well. I am certainly looking forward to our conversation Sunday. If you'd like to join us, just go to lighthousecommunity.com at 10AM Sunday. And if you have any questions you'd like to hear discussed, just email them to eric@lighthousecommunity.com.
But for this morning, I encourage you to be still for a little while, long enough for the untamed emotions you’ve been chasing off to begin to creep out of the shadows. Don’t push them away. Just sit with them. Because until we acknowledge our feelings, we can’t begin to address them.
I’m grateful to be on this journey with you,
Pastor Eric
- Weariness at the radical change to our weekly rhythms. I’m finding that change takes a toll even for those of us who are energized by it.
- Fear of the long-term effects of this virus not only physically but psychologically and socially. I mean, will I ever be able to hug someone as freely as I did a month ago?
- Grief at the ways this has impacted people I love. So many people I know are out of work, separated from their extended families, and suffering alone.
- Frustration that I can’t even be there to console those who need it most. It exasperates me to hear that one of my church family is in the ER for chest pains and I can’t rush there sit with them.
But how do we move on? How do we deal with the emotions that are growing within us, metastasizing with each passing day of quarantine?
Do we invent new projects in order to keep ourselves busy? That’s what I’ve been doing so far, but it’s only pushed the feelings deeper. Do we reach for the phone, the remote, the computer, the bottle, the ice cream to help anesthetize the discomfort? God knows I’ve done that often enough. But the feelings are relentless, and they always prowl at the edges of my consciousness, distracting me from being present and stealing my joy.
So what are we to do? What am I to do?
I cannot shake the feeling that my Shepherd is inviting me to do something completely unexpected, something that seems at first glance to be counter-intuitive. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. After all, He has a long track record of flipping our expectations:
The greatest in God’s Kingdom is the servant of all.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Jesus conquering our mortal enemy by dying.
And when I woke on Monday morning, long before the sun peeked its radiant head above the horizon, my Shepherd whispered another counter-intuitive idea into my mind:
"It’s time to sit with your sorrow."
What do you mean, God? Invite the prowling emotions to draw near? Acknowledge the parasitic thoughts that buzz incessantly around my head? Why would I want to do that?!
Then it dawned on me (or perhaps the Holy Spirit helped me to see): Until we acknowledge our pain, we cannot heal from it. Like a sports injury, if we don’t rest and give our wounds time to heal, they will continue to plague us, casting a shadow over everything we do.
I’ll be honest: sitting with our sorrow isn't easy. Here in the West, we have a compulsive desire to find the silver lining and then move on. It makes sense since we’re a people who want to find meaning in the messiness and make sense of the senseless.
Now, on a side note, I have a lot of hope right now, because I’ve seen some beautiful things along this broken path, and I know that God isn’t wasting this time. He has this uncanny ability to use the manure life throws at us to grow spiritual fruit in our lives.
But the emotions are still there, and if we want to heal from them and grow through them, then we need to allow ourselves to sit with them.
So that’s what I plan to do with my church community. For the next several weeks, we will be putting our previously scheduled Acts series on hold and spend some time sitting with our sadness (and all the other emotions this season is bringing up for us). This Sunday, I have a mentor of mine joining me to discuss what the Bible has to say about our sorrow. Bill Dogterom is a pastor and professor of Spiritual Formation at Vanguard University, and he’s the first person I reached out to when I realized that I wanted to learn how to grieve well. I am certainly looking forward to our conversation Sunday. If you'd like to join us, just go to lighthousecommunity.com at 10AM Sunday. And if you have any questions you'd like to hear discussed, just email them to eric@lighthousecommunity.com.
But for this morning, I encourage you to be still for a little while, long enough for the untamed emotions you’ve been chasing off to begin to creep out of the shadows. Don’t push them away. Just sit with them. Because until we acknowledge our feelings, we can’t begin to address them.
I’m grateful to be on this journey with you,
Pastor Eric
No comments:
Post a Comment