Feelings don't stay buried

A practice for releasing emotions + Update on life in Durham

I packed three trips in one last week (my husband is still recovering). A border immersion in El Paso and Juarez with We Welcome, a weekend trip to Palm Springs to speak at my church’s women’s retreat, an overnight in Calabasas for a client meeting. I’ll share more about the border experience during Advent so I can “let it cook,” as the kids say.

Before I share what’s on my heart today, a quick update on life in Durham, NC. We are settled in (aside from our constant search for a mid-century modern desk and dresser at thrift stores) and I am loving the leaves falling from our giant trees, walks on the river, time with my Mom, and all the neighbors coming by to drop off food and welcome us.

This was just a few weeks ago but now it is FREEZING. We need to buy puffer jackets.

My plants are thriving and I managed to propagate my two favorite Fiddles from California (who have new homes in LA because they are 6-feet and 9-feet tall). I love my new role at work and the team we’re building for the future. My anxiety and stress has declined and while we’ve got to find friends and community, it is lovely to enjoy a quiet social calendar for a season. It’s not rainbows and sunshine but it is peaceful. I feel God’s grace and kindness toward me. Thanks for letting me share :).

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I’m carving out as many pockets of joy possible. When it feels like the world is burning, I’m determined to love the time I have left. Joy is our resistance. The world is so large and looming at times that I don’t know what else to do except get small and specific in my daily life and relationships. So little is in our power to influence or control and that is its own grief, yes?

I’m not sure about you, but my social feeds are full of the devastating loss of lives in Gaza and Israel — blown up hospitals and refugee camps — among other things, and I’m anticipating the impending holiday season, which brings its own set of complicated emotions for many people. And what I know is this: Like it or not, loss is part of our lives. Kind of like “big T” and “little t” trauma, grief is similar. The Grief Recovery Institute lists out over 40 experiences that cause us to experience loss.

It’s a healthy reminder to self-manage the ups and downs of change and transition — the choices we made and the choices made for us. Acknowledging that things hurt, that we wish for something different, better, or more can feel intimidating if we don’t have the tools to move through grief.

But it’s dangerous to bury our feelings because they don’t stay buried. They seep out into our relationships, bodies, and in the work we do. I think we’re afraid to face and unpack grief because it’s time-consuming and we also don’t know where we’ll end up. To what end should we face our pain?

“If you desire healing,
let yourself fall ill
let yourself fall ill.”

Rumi

The end is healing. That’s a reason to face grief. Because if you don’t deal with grief, it will deal with you.

I know it’s strange, but the holidays are a time when I allow myself to “fall ill”. The coming season of Advent dissolves my pretense, and it is easier to accept the invitation to acknowledge and accept that things are not as they should be.

One of the practices that has led me to hope when I am tempted to despair is the unique faith language of lament. It is poetry, liturgy, honesty. After years of sharing this in messages or workshops, I finally wrote a full message on the practice because I see a pattern of people unable to move through grief. Unable to name hurts and harms. Unable to give voice to needs and desires. And because this is what I know:

The backbone of lament is hope.

Two thirds of the Psalms are psalms of lament. There’s an entire book of lamentations, and the prophets lean into subversive narratives by listening to the land and the people cry out. They make the invisible visible. The Bible is rich in both celebration and lament and part of our big American energy is that we prefer the victory and triumph narrative. We need a balance in our faith expression.

In his book Born of Lament: The Theology and Politics of Hope in Africa, Emmanuel Kantongole¹ writes:

Biblical lament is not unrestrained speech; it is not simply a form of venting or whining; neither is it a phase or necessary step in the healing or grieving process. Biblical lament is a structured and “complex language of complaint, protest and appeal directed to God.” And the fact that biblical lament is directed to God makes it a distinct faith language, with its own vocabulary and grammar for intimate and difficult conversations with the Lord, a way “ ‘to hurt with God’ when one is in the midst of a storm.

Lament is a way to move through grief, to connect with God and others in the process. The best things about grief is that we don’t have to hold back. We can lay our anger, anxiety, and anguish bare before God who can handle the truth of our experience and existence. And since lament is a communal practice in nature, hopefully, we can do the same in the presence of people we love and trust.

Kantongole also lays out the five elements of lament in his book. I want to share these with you and offer an invitation for you to write your own as a way of moving through big emotions and feelings.

Five elements of lament

The book uses Psalm 13 as the perfect example here. (also a short Psalm if you need a good place to start — one of my personal faves cause I am up in the cut like HOW LONG LORD on the regular.) But it’s important to note that a lament need not follow this exact formula. The five elements are a guide to us not a rule. For example, Psalm 88 omits the confidence/praise altogether. Because sometimes it be like that.

What would it look like for you to write your own lament? Maybe it’s personal: loss of a job, sick children, mental health issues, aging, change in status or relationship. Maybe it’s communal: war, sexual exploitation of women, a burden for foster care, great grief over economic injustice. Both matter to God. Both matter to your community.

We’re watching Lessons in Chemistry (one of my favorite books from last year) and I love the scene where she gives birth. It’s heart-achingly beautiful as Elizabeth gives birth alone, remembering the loss of her partner to death. After the baby is born, the nurse comes around to ask for a name. When Elizabeth responds that she hadn’t really thought about it, the nurse says, “Name her whatever you feel.”

“Mad.” Elizabeth says.

“Aww, Maddie is a beautiful name. My niece is named Madeline.”

“Not Maddie. Not Madeline. Just Mad.”

It’s the best. A few days later, a neighbor laughs at the name and says, “I should have named mine Scared and Frustrated.” She normalizes, without minimizing, Elizabeth’s grief and exhaustion. What a gift that is — to be seen, to be heard.

Sometimes, the best thing we can do for each other is bear witness to reality, to sit in solidarity, to resist the knee-jerk reaction to fix it or cover it up. Don’t put lipstick on a pig. (Although, cute, honestly. would like to see it, potentially.)

Lament activates our prophetic imagination. As we lead ourselves from grief to hope, we sense a new narrative, a new reality forming. This is the story we’ve lived and this is the story we’ll tell. A story of community, healing, and restoration, redemption, recovery, and joy, because in our grief, we dare to hold on to hope.

Blessing you this weekend. So glad you’re here.

Ashley

1. Katongole, Emmanuel. Born from Lament : The Theology and Politics of Hope in Africa, Eerdmans, 2017.