8

Lament

FEBRUARY

At the sound of her cell phone buzzing on her desk, Kit glanced up from her retreat notes. It was unusual for Jamie to call while she was at New Hope. Normally, she called before or after work.

“Did I get you at a bad time?” Jamie asked.

“No, just reviewing some notes for the retreat tomorrow. How are you?”

“I just got a call from Wren. She doesn’t sound good.”

Kit stiffened, mentally scanning the last few hours: a breakfast together at the house and extended time in her studio. She’d asked Wren to re-clean one of the women’s bathrooms, but she hadn’t seemed upset or offended by that. Just apologetic. Distracted by painting, she’d said. And Kit had said, No worries. But maybe she had managed to disguise a deeper sense of shame. “I saw her about half an hour ago. She seemed okay.”

Jamie said, “She just got a text from Casey’s mother, who found out about the memorial service and wasn’t at all happy about it.”

Kit exhaled slowly. “Oh, no. I’ll go talk to her.”

“I’m sorry to bother you, Kit, it’s just . . .”

“I know.” Any little trigger could send her into a dangerous place. “How about if I ask her to check in with you later? That way we don’t—”

“I know,” Jamie said. “I know I promised not to talk about her behind her back. But I’m worried about this one.”

Kit promised to call if there was an emergency, then opened her office door and headed down the hallway. Wren’s studio was closed. Kit knocked. No answer. She pushed the door open a few inches. Not there.

A few minutes later she found her in the chapel, near the painting of Jesus on the cross, seated in the chair Wren had marked with a tiny strip of masking tape to memorialize the place where Kit had found Casey’s goodbye letter. “Your mom called me.”

Wren nodded. “Your office door was closed.”

Kit sat down beside her. “You can always check with Gayle to see if I’m meeting with someone. But if it’s just me working in there, I don’t mind you interrupting.”

“Okay.”

Kit motioned toward the phone on Wren's lap. “Casey’s mom contacted you?”

“Yeah.” She shifted in her chair. “Turns out, one of the guys who said he thought it would be cool to follow Jesus—well, his mom knows Casey’s mom and mentioned to her what a miracle it was, him coming to faith at Casey’s service.”

Oh, West Michigan. It was such a small world.

“So basically,” Wren said, “this amazing thing—because it was amazing, like Casey had something to do with leading him there, you know?—turns into this awful, ugly, hateful thing.” She bit her lip and touched her screen. “Here. You can read it.”

Kit took the phone. Wren hadn’t exaggerated. The words spit venom from the screen. How dare she? Her actions were “unforgiveable” and “selfish,” a “wound and insult to his family,” and especially to his wife, who was, his mother said, his wife, much as Wren might have wished otherwise, much as she had tried to undermine and destroy that reality by refusing to let go of her relationship with him, even after he married. “What’s done is done,” his mother concluded, but Wren would have to live with the consequences of the irreparable harm she had caused, and she hoped she would feel the full weight of it.

“Dear God,” Kit murmured as she turned the phone upside-down and set it aside. “Can you delete it?”

“If I want to.”

“I hope you will.”

She shrugged. “That’s not all.”

Kit waited.

“I’ve been following his wife online so I could get updates and see all the baby photos. Like I could keep watch and pray, because I think Casey would want that, even with all the secrets he kept from me. And I guess I was also hoping that someday Brooke might post something that would give more information about what happened, what he intended.” She reached for her phone and started scrolling. “Maybe she figured out that I was tracking her—maybe his mother warned her or something—because when I tried to check her page a little while ago, her profile had been made private.” Wren’s voice broke. “So, that’s the end. I’m completely cut off from him now.” Her shoulders heaved. Kit wrapped her arm around her and held her while she cried.

That night, after she and Wren finished their evening prayers together, Kit reached into her notebook on the kitchen table and removed seven dated envelopes from the pockets. “I was going to save these for another time, but maybe it’s more important not to try to control when you read them, or how you read them.”

Wren eyed her quizzically.

“I’ve been writing you letters. A bit like what you suggested, with my own story wrapped around some of the prayer station Scriptures. But rather than putting something out publicly, I decided to write it just for you.”

Wren took the stack from her. “Thank you. That means a lot to me.”

“Whatever’s helpful, receive it with my love. Whatever’s not helpful, disregard. But given what you received today from Casey’s mother, maybe something in here will speak to you and give you comfort.”

Wren reached for her hand. “Companions in sorrow,” she said. And Kit nodded.

Companions in sorrow. Kit gazed out at the group gathered for the second session of the Lenten retreat Saturday morning. Wren had asked if she could attend, even if she had missed the first one. Kit had hardly been able to conceal her surprise and delight when she replied, “Of course.” She would be teaching on lament, she told her, and Wren had said, “Good.”

And so, after offering an opening prayer, Kit began with a story she often told when she taught about lament, how years ago a friend had sent her a link to a television talk show featuring a guest who had been born without arms or legs. Before showing the audience the introductory video, however, the host gave this admonishment: “Anyone with a complaint on the tip of your tongue, shut your mouth. This video is going to shut your mouth.” And then the audience watched the inspiring footage of someone conquering a profound disability.

“That’s the voice many of us internalize,” Kit said, “the voice that tells us our suffering is nothing compared to what others suffer and that we have no right to complain. No right to grieve.” Much of her time, first as a chaplain and then as a spiritual director, she said, was spent giving permission to those who had swallowed their pain to spit it out. “Because if we aren’t offering our pain to God, we have an enemy who would love to turn it toxic and use it for his own purposes.”

With her scribbled outline on the podium in front of her, Kit talked about lament being a spiritual discipline for the brave, how the lament psalms were raw, bold, and even accusatory, pleading—sometimes demanding—that God act in a manner consistent with his revealed character. “These are the protest psalms,” Kit said, “the psalms that cry out for the kingdom to come, the prayers that help us return to the love of God when we doubt the love of God. These are the prayers of the bewildered, the broken, and the hopeful. These aren’t the prayers of atheists. Atheists expect nothing from God, so they’re never disappointed by God. But if we have experienced the mercy and love and power of a good and generous God—if we have seen God intervene in amazing ways in our lives or in the lives of others—then we’re bound to be left feeling confused and disappointed when God seems silent and distant, when God seems deaf to our groaning or unconcerned about our needs and our pain. The question is, Will we offer that disappointment and sense of betrayal to God? Will we lament in God’s direction, or will we walk away?”

Kit’s gaze fell on Wren, who was looking intently at her with the same probing expression that had accompanied her question months ago: Do you share your story at the retreats you lead?

How long did that moment of discernment last, when Kit kept silent before the group, listening for the Spirit to say yes or no? Long enough for a few in the group to begin shifting in their seats. Someone coughed. She glanced down at her notes, then stepped away from the podium.

“When I was almost forty,” she said, “I lost my beloved son to a drug overdose. In my grief, I lost my hope in a good and loving God. I could have lost my life, I was that despairing. At the psychiatric hospital where I went to try to recover, a chaplain read lament psalms to me when I could not read or pray myself. He gently pointed me to the cross. And he encouraged me to listen deeply to the voice of Jesus crying out, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

At her table toward the back of the room, Wren pressed her hand to her heart. And nodded.

FEBRUARY 24

My dear Wren,

It blessed me so deeply tonight when you asked if I would be willing to continue writing letters to you. I’m honored to hear that my words have been a help and a comfort to you. It’s been a rich journey for me, reflecting on how the Lord has met and shaped me through suffering. We forget so much over the years. And we can become immune to the power of our own stories.

I don’t think you’ll ever know the significance of you nudging me to share mine, first with you and then today, on a larger scale, with others. I had been so worried about calling attention to myself that I neglected the opportunity to call attention to Christ in very specific ways. And though I’ve often marveled at how the Spirit has moved during the retreats at New Hope, today I was aware of what was opened in others because of what the Lord opened in me.

Thank you. Thank you for reminding me that though our laments are intensely personal, they are meant to be offered in community. I’ve taught this to others. I’ve neglected it for myself.

I’m reminded of the women weeping as they followed Jesus to the cross. What a gift that they had one another to share the burden of their sorrow. Though Jesus tells them not to weep for him, he calls them to weep for themselves and their children. Not only will they bear the agony of watching their beloved friend and rabbi die, but some of them will live to see the brutal destruction of Jerusalem. And for some of them, the pain, he says, will be too much to bear. “They will say to the mountains, Fall on us! And to the hills, Cover us!”

That’s what it feels like when we’re in the depths of despair, doesn’t it? We want it to be over. We may not be tempted to bring about the end by our own hand, but we long for mountains to fall on us so we’ll be free from the anguish. You and I have lived that. Thank God, we lived through it. Sometimes, we live with it. Always, we live in spite of it. What a gift to live it together.

With you,

Kit