Still in bed and propped up against pillows one Saturday morning, I read my daily devotional a few weeks after Chuck was discharged from the hospital and inpatient stroke rehab.  The plan was a study on the book of Ruth, and that day’s reading began with this:

“Naomi has experienced a great deal of sorrow and loss in her life, and she is in a very dark place.  She doesn’t understand why God would allow all this tragedy to happen.”  Love God Greatly: Ruth, YouVersion plan, Day 5. 

And I thought, “Amen, sister!”

(In case you aren’t familiar with that book, Ruth had lost her husband and her adult sons, which, in that time and culture, meant she had no one to take care of her anymore.)

I next opened Instagram to see if something could lift my spirits – and encountered this post from the previous day:

“When the world as you understood it falls apart, God’s invitation to you is to lament.  Lament consists of two things: allowing yourself to feel your sorrow, and then expressing that sorrow.”  Adam Young, quote from the “Why Lament (Surprisingly) Leads to Life and Freedom” podcast.

Lament.  Yes, I can relate to that.

Then Cody walked in with a big smile and a plate full of pancakes to treat me to breakfast in bed.  And, of course, my dark mood lightened.

But, after breakfast, I started asking God how to keep writing for Come So Alive when I wasn’t feeling that way now, feeling “so alive.”  How did I give people hope when I barely had enough for myself? 

“Maybe I need to stop for a while,” I thought.

In response, I heard, “You can tell Me anything, Carrie.”

So, I have.  I have written to God almost weekly, despite thinking I had nothing left to write.  Interestingly, writing for the last six months has helped me through the grief, disappointment, and fear since Chuck’s stroke.

This week I started a new Bible study called Don’t Give the Enemy a Seat at Your Table by Louie Giglio.  It studies Psalm 23, which, even though we associate it with funerals, is less about death and more about life.  Specifically, life with God, our Shepherd.

The Psalms are grouped into different categories, one being psalms of lament.  Now, Psalm 23 isn’t technically a psalm of lament but when I read and resonate with walking through dark valleys…well, I don’t know about you, but I tend to lament in dark valleys.

I started the Bible study guide for week 1 a few days ago and made it through all of four pages.  Page 4 says “READ” at the top and tells you to read the rest of the page out loud – the rest of the page being Psalm 23.  And as I read it, I also wrote on it.  I didn’t intend to but words just flowed into my mind and out my pen at the end of lines.

Lines like, “He makes me lie down in green pastures,” after which I wrote, because I wouldn’t otherwise.  And, “he refreshes my soul.” which is crispy and dry.

I didn’t get any further into the study that day – and still haven’t.  I think I read, and wrote, that day what I needed right now.  Reminders of how to live my life, with my Shepherd.

If felt odd, though, to write my own lines in a psalm.  It isn’t one of the Ten Commandments but it still feels like a no-no.  Then I remembered a text I sent to a friend many years ago.  It was Psalm 151…except there is no Psalm 151.  I made it up.

I don’t remember the exact lines but it movingly described Cody being sick again and my getting up in the middle of the night to get him Tylenol…and breaking my little toe as I slammed it into the wood corner of his bed frame in the dark. 

A psalm of lament.

After I remembered that this week, I then rediscovered the above quote about God inviting us to lament, that lament is both feeling the sorrow and expressing it.

I didn’t just read Psalm 23 this week – I interacted with it.  I interacted with God really.  Which is part of the point of the study Don’t Give the Enemy a Seat at Your Table.  Jesus has set a table for me.  He wants me to sit at it with Him.  Just me.  The enemy doesn’t get to join us.

Jesus wants me to pull up that plate of pancakes and, over a meal, talk to Him about my disappointments, my fears, my struggles.  To have breakfast with Him, even if it is with a side of lament.