| Learn to pray the Psalms. They run the gamut of human emotion from thanksgiving, to anger, to fear, to loneliness, to grief. The Psalmist doesn't miss a beat when it comes to life. Not life as we wish it was, but life as it is: 'I pour out my complaint before him; before him I tell my trouble.' He vents his pain to God, he allows himself to 'feel it.' That takes courage, especially when you just want to put on a brave face. John Ortberg wrote: 'I regret the pain of failure so keenly that I backed away from owning it and learning from it. I could not heal and move on. I wanted to bury it so deeply that no one would ever guess it was there-not even me.' Sound familiar? The Bible doesn't discourage the grieving process, it just warns us not to get stuck in it. '...Weeping may remain for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning...' (Psalm 30:5 NIV). To reach your morning of rejoicing you must go through your night of weeping. FB Meyer writes: 'There are some who chide tears as unmanly, un-submissive, un-Christian. They comfort us with a chill, bidding us to put on a rigid and tearless countenance. We may well ask if a man who cannot weep can really love? Sorrow is just love bereaved; its most natural expression is tears. Jesus wept. The Ephesian converts wept on the neck of the Apostle Paul whose face they were never to see again. So go ahead and pour out your heart to God. It's a vital step to becoming whole. |
