Suffering and the Psalms

A few years ago, my family walked through a season I would not wish on anyone. I won't share the details because it isn't mine alone to share. What I will say is this: when the suffering came, the songs I knew dried up. The verses I had memorized felt like greeting cards. Every neat answer rang false.

A friend, a Catholic priest, sat with me one night and said, "Pray the Psalms. Especially the angry ones. They were given to you precisely for this."

The full vocabulary

I had read the Psalms for years. What I had not done was let them speak for me. I had skipped over the lament Psalms because they sounded too dark, too unhinged, too unbecoming of a faithful person.

But Israel sang those Psalms in worship. The very people of God put words to fury, abandonment, despair, and even revenge — and called it prayer. The God of the Bible can hold all of it. Apparently he prefers to.

What this taught me

It taught me that part of why we feel cut off from God in suffering is that we won't bring God the suffering itself. We bring him the cleaned-up version — the spiritually acceptable version — and wonder why we feel distant.

The Psalmists are not so polite. "How long, O Lord, will you forget me forever?" (Psalm 13) is in the same book as "The Lord is my shepherd." Both are real prayer. Both are inspired Scripture.

"Cast your burden on the Lord, and he will sustain you." — Psalm 55:22

A practice

Find a Psalm that names where you actually are. Don't curate it. If you are angry, find an angry one (Psalm 13, 22, 88). If you are grieving, find a grieving one (42, 77). Read it out loud. Let it pray you.

You will not pray your way out of suffering in a single afternoon. But you will, perhaps for the first time, pray honestly inside it. And honest prayer is the only kind that keeps a soul alive.