I love Christmas. Say what you want about consumerism, I love doing nice things for the people. I love coming up with something that hopefully puts a smile on their face. It’s fun. I love my family and I love spending time with them. I love reflecting on the miraculous coming of Christ and somehow connecting that with whatever pagan rituals involve sausage balls and gift-giving.
So when I drove through the night last week to surprise my parents for the holidays and found my mother crying on the front porch, I knew this was going to be a different kind of break. My ninety-three year old grand mother has succumbed to old age and took a nightmarish fall right about the time I was driving through Montgomery, Alabama. Mama has fallen before and almost literally bounced back, but not this time. Without going into detail, it has been difficult to say the very very least.
This all happens after my first semester of divinity school and a personal exploration on the power and purpose of lament. I’ve spent a lot of time familiarizing myself with much of Walter Breuggemann’s thoughts on lament and it’s quite powerful.
Except my life has known no real lament.
In all complete honesty, I think the last time I cried tears of grief was in the final credits of Star Wars Episode III and the impending reality that the greatest story of my childhood was over. Legitimate lament is a foreign subject to me.
The truth is, lament is a lost form of spiritual expression in our American world. We largely try to ignore pain and put on a facade that our lives are perfect and painless and put together. And our churches largely mirror these actions. Instead of being the countercultural kind of place where pain can be expressed and heard our churches perpetuate the paralysis of our society.
But in this season of joy and good tidings, I have finally experienced that paradoxical emotional tension that comes near the end of a Christian’s life. Stretched between the sorrow of the possibility of missing someone and the joy of recognizing a new life to come; I’m so thankful for a family who can come together at the table in both joy and laughter and lament and tears.
Lament is the appropriate response because it is raw and honest communication with the divine. It allows the expression needed to create the space for hope and joy to penetrate the pain.
Yesterday, I volunteered to take the night shift sitting with Mama in the hospital. My mom and aunt needed a break and I’m a night owl anyway. I acted like it was no big deal but I was scared.
Scared of hospitals in general.
Scared she might pass while I was there.
Scared of the phone call I would have to make.
Scared that she might wake up and not remember me.
Scared that I might not know how to react to her needs.
Scared that she might have to go to the bathroom.
Scared that she might be having a good night and I would have to listen for hours on end of her telling the story of how David Lipscomb baptized her grandmother.
Turns out she slept and I read a book until I too fell asleep. But then she started moaning. The kind of moaning you hear old people do in the movies. Long drawn out, weak moaning. Scary moaning. The kind of moaning that causes a naive guy like me to think Oh God, is the end? Please let this be the end. Wait, no I’m not prepared for this to be end. I don’t know what to do if this is the end.
After a nurse came to give her some medicine I stood by her bed and held her hand. And I cried. I’m kind of crying while I write this. I cried and I prayed. And I must have cried pretty good too cause amidst her moaning and begging me to “get her out of here,” she mustered the strength to slowly open her eyes and say with her Southern bluntness, “you got a cold?”
I snorted the snot up into my nose one last time, smiled and said, “No ma’am. Just a little sad, that’s all.”
That’s my Mama.
I needed tonight. I needed to accept the reality that I’m twenty-three years old and should be able to face my fear of anything more serious than Wayne’s World. I needed to sit in a dark hospital room and ponder the things you do when the ones you love are dying. I needed to hold my grandmother’s hand, remind her who I was, and tell her I love her. I needed to stand next to her and pray simply and frankly. I needed to lament.
And then to be reminded of my Mama’s selfless life even amidst her suffering — I needed that too. That is the joy that penetrates my lament. That is peace that passes understanding.