Last month my dad gifted my three-year-old daughter Ana her first plant. She carefully placed it in a sunny window and then faithfully watered it every morning. Her excitement was uncontainable when finally one morning, a small green bud parted to reveal a sliver of bright red geranium. After carefully examining this little miracle, she began to gently touch the little bud, and I soon realized that she was trying to figure out a way to open it to fully let the flower out. Thankfully I was able to intervene in time to save the little guy, and the next few days became an exercise in self control. It was so beautiful to see Ana’s impatience transform to joy and wonder as the flower slowly unfolded to display delicate ruby red petals.
Ana was learning to cultivate something that in therapy I refer to as a “sunset mode of mind.” The act of laying down and gazing in wordless wonder at a night sky illuminated by a million stars. Digging your toes in the sand and watching as bright yellows and oranges slowly morph into deep pinks and purples as the sun sets over the ocean; disappearing into the magical world of a good book or a classical symphony, hanging on to each word or note. In a world that demands a problem solving mode of mind a great deal of the time, it can take some intentionality to fully enter into these moments. We can problem-solve math equations, toddler tantrums, broken cupboards, and relationship conflicts. However, we cannot problem-solve galaxies, sunsets, or symphonies. Ironically the harder we try, the less space we leave for the beauty to unfold.
Until recently, I had always associated a sunset mode of mind with feelings like awe and wonder. However, as I have worked through the book of Lamentations in the Bible, I have begun to wonder if it can also translate to feelings of grief and sadness. Perhaps lament is the equivalent of taking time to sit in the middle of a pile of ruins and deeply feel the tragedy of the destruction of something that used to be beautiful. In the same way that we can habitually race past sunsets and fast forward symphonies, we can also become accustomed to automatically clean up the rubble of a broken building and try to salvage something new.
In his Lamentations, Ezekiel spends time sitting in the midst of a broken city and deeply mourning. He uses many metaphors to attempt to capture the level of devastation he sees: “She who was once great among the nations now sits alone like a widow” (Lam 1:1). “Her princes are like starving deer searching for pasture. They are too weak to run from the pursuing enemy” (Lam 1:6). He also uses descriptive language to evoke the pain he feels: “He has sent fire from heaven that burns in my bones’’ (Lam 1:13). “For all these things I weep; tears flow down my cheeks” (Lam 1:16). In this moment of defeat, Ezekiel could have chosen to stay in his room and shut out the world. He could have immediately run around trying to raise a building committee, or started brainstorming ways to build himself a new life somewhere else. Instead, he sat in the middle of the ruins and took an raw and honest inventory of the damage. He allowed himself to grieve until his insides hurt and cry until there were no tears left.
It is so easy to jump to problem solving mode when faced with pain and brokenness. Instantly offering advice and hope to a heartbroken friend. Immediately rebounding after a broken relationship. Frantically engaging in work and activity after a major loss. Not problem solving in these moments means exposing your heart to pain, opening up difficult questions, and sometime feeling out of control. We want to pry open the flowers of healing and restoration because frankly, the thought of waiting in a broken place is brutal.
C.S Lewis paints another vivid picture of lament in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. Lucy and Susan hide in the woods and watch in horror as the witch and her army kill Asian on the stone table. Lewis describes what follows: “As soon as the wood was silent again Susan and Lucy crept out onto the open hill-top. The moon was getting low and thin clouds were passing across her, but still they could see the shape of the lion lying dead in his bonds. And they both knelt in the wet grass and kissed his cold face and stroked his beautiful fur- what was left of it- and cried till they could cry no more. And then they looked at each other and held each other’s hands for mere loneliness and cried again; and then again were silent.”
And YET, had they not stayed and lamented for the night, Susan’s and Lucy would not have witnessed what followed: “The Stone Table was broken into two pieces by a great crack that ran down it from end to end… They looked round. There, shining in the sunrise, larger than they had seen him before, shaking his mane stood Aslan himself.”
Ezekiel’s laments also gradually unfold to reveal some of the most beautiful statements of hope and faith found in the Bible: “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning, great is your faithfulness” (Lam 3:22-23). “When I begged you to listen to my cry, you heard. You answered me and told me not to be afraid. You came to my rescue Lord and saved my life.” (Lam 3:56-58). Through many tears, complaints and honest questions, Ezekiel landed on eternal truths that could withstand any army, weapon, or siege.
We live in a world where chatGTP can instantly tell us every useless fact about a jellyfish, we can order a new dresser with the click of a button, and it is unacceptable to wait for longer than two minutes in the McDonalds drive through for a cheeseburger. It can be so easy to forget that the most beautiful things take time and require waiting. It is not my intention to minimize skills like problem solving and efficiency, but I wonder what it could look like to take regular moments to join Ana and wait, in both places of beauty and places of brokenness. After many of these kind of moments, Ezekiel landed on this insight: “The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him” (Lam 3:25).
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