“It’s hard to know how to hope in healthy ways.”
I wrote this to a sweet friend who was checking in and had asked if there is a light at the end of the tunnel over here. And I can only think, “yes, maybe…?” And I think we’re all feeling this in heavy and hard ways.
Last week has knocked us back. Hopefully in ways that aren’t surprising because evil is as evil does, but it’s still disheartening and disorienting when it carelessly wreaks its brand of havoc. And after so many disappointments and loses, and the hard knocks of this very heavy time, one more thing may feel like too much.
And you don’t deserve a trite, “well, buck up, buttercup!” Instead, I offer the fact that this is too much. We’re carrying too much grief and our broader culture has not given us a language for lament.
And I really don’t know how to hold hope in healthy and helpful ways right now. But I do know how to grieve. And it’s messy, and hard, and painful. But a wordless groan of prayer is an invitation for the Spirit to carry the too much with us. To invite the man of sorrows to hold what is too heavy for us gives us a chance to process and dwell where we are and steward the burdens we have been given.
Know that I join you in crying “Kyrie Eleison,” and know that though you may not have hope to hold for tomorrow, we have hope to hold in eternity because we have a companion in suffering. May the Spirit fill you with the hope of eternity in the midst of your lament as well as the strength to pursue justice on earth as it is in Heaven.
