Lament and the Mission of God (2)

Part 2, My Ally in Grief

In part 1, I introduced the topic of lament as a key biblical process to help discover God’s purposes beyond our pain. Before considering the topic further, I want to share my context and how I discovered that God was my ally, not my enemy when I went through deep grief.

In 2016, my wife, Laura, died suddenly from a brain aneurysm. Over the past few years, I have written and shared extensively about facing the future I didn’t choose (please explore this website!) The following (adapted) extract from Grief and Grace shares some of how I related to God in the immediate aftermath of Laura’s death.

So where was God in all of this? How did my faith shape my response to this tragedy? Or, rather, how did walking through this tragedy shape my faith? When I was sitting by Laura’s bedside in hospital in the period before they turned off her life support, I had simply prayed, ‘Lord, everything I’ve believed since childhood had better be true’. Maybe it was a child-like or a childish prayer. But right then I needed a father. A daddy. And I called out to my heavenly father desperately hoping that he would give me the faith and resilience to survive the storm.

Laura passed away at 8.30 in the morning and a couple of hours later I was back at the holiday centre where we were staying. The news had been circulated and friends and family were traveling from various places to come and join us. While waiting, I went for a walk around the grounds of the centre – just needing some space and time alone. My mind was a bit numb and the gravity of what had just taken place was slowly beginning to sink in. My emotional turmoil was in stark contrast to the serene surroundings and incredible ocean views. At one point I stood still and tried to reflect on what I was feeling. I thought about God. Was I meant to feel angry with him for taking Laura too soon? Should I be resentful that this had happened to me? But my mind didn’t dwell on those things. Rather, in that moment, I experienced anger against death itself.

I hated death. Death is horrible. I had never felt this hatred for death before. Particularly the death of someone who still had so much to give. She still had so much life to live, and still had so many people to love. I had not invited death to visit my world and turn it upside down. But it came, unprepared as I was. And it occurred to me that death was not God’s plan. He hates death. And I wondered how he feels when, on a moment by moment basis, the creatures that he loves so much, have their life on this earth extinguished through a myriad of tragic events. ‘Wow’, I prayed, ‘that must cause you so much pain’.

And then it dawned on me that God was not celebrating that Laura had died. He never intended for a man to be left as a widower and for three children to grow up without their mother. No. God understood my pain for this was not his plan for human beings. He also understood my pain because, in order to defeat the consequences of death, he had watched his only Son die on the cross. This is what I’d believed since childhood. The truth of this historical fact had shaped my life. And now, when it mattered most, I didn’t feel disconnected from God. Instead, I felt that perhaps I could relate to him a bit better. We shared in this moment of grief. I realised that God was my ally, not my enemy. He was with me in the valley of the shadow of death.

My primary lesson throughout my grief journey has been that God is my ally. And he is my ally because we both lament death. It was never his plan. In the next article, I will look at the biblical evidence that God is a lamenting God who deeply identifies with our grief.