The last several weeks I’ve been listening to an online sermon series on “How to Lament”.  This instruction has been God’s perfect timing for me.  Biblical lament is prayer expressing sorrow, pain, or confusion.  I have had ALL three lately in rolling hills and deep valleys.  Lament must be important because there is a whole book about it in the Bible called Lamentations.  

If I’m honest, I don’t know how to lament well.  Most of these prayers are complaining and whining, “to my Daddy”, about things I cannot change and lately all I feel in response is SILENCE.   Days of silence, weeks of silence and now years of silence on the matter at hand.  

Most of my life I’ve run from silence.  I have filled those spaces with anything and everything to avoid it.   It’s only been the last several years that I have grown to actually crave it.  

One lesson I have learned is that in the quiet I hear God’s voice for me.  

“The Lord your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.” Zephaniah 3:17  

In the quiet, I can actually hear God singing over me.  But now there is a new season when the hurt is so deep and the silence is deafening.  I CANNOT hear My Father’s song for me.  Lament is the only cry of my heart, “My God, My God why have you forsaken…forgotten me?”   

I know…the Bible says, ”He hears every cry and holds every tear of mine in His Hands.”  My head knows but my heart is deeply broken and in the silence I feel alone. 

I don’t need to be afraid of the silence but the longer the silence wanes, the more my worry, fear and anxiety take control and drown out my confidence in Him.  

In my despair, this one challenge pushes itself through the darkness …”What IF God is drawing me again into deeper dependence on Him?” This question alone inspires fresh hope into my heart and instantly takes me back to all the battles He’s fought for me.  

I do want dependence.  I want my life to be impossible without Him.  

This is exactly why I love Mountain climbs; physical tasks, fundraising for children I love half way across the world. All seem impossible. The impossible reminds me how small I am and how BIG our God is.  In these places of deep dependence, I see more of Him and less of me.

But when the going gets tough and I can’t hear My Father singing over me, I do want to give up.  

This has been true my whole life.  My worry and anxiety lie to me and I think He’s left me on my own.  I struggle to remember His faithful promises and I struggle to remember what He’s done for me in the past.   

I want to remember, so I force myself to speak out loud how He’s provided for me and how HE will do it again.  Then more challenges come, “Will I praise Him even if I don’t get what I want”?   “Will I praise Him even when I don’t understand?”

This IS dependence He is building in me.  It’s not weakness but fresh new strength.  Muscle takes time to build and any strengthening only happens through the repeated tearing down and building up.  

He’s singing over me…a new song.  “Once I was lost but now I am found.  Once I was blind but now I see”…again and again.  

So here I am at a familiar place, asking God once again to do what He has promised to do.  “If He cares for the birds…He WILL care for me..”    

He is growing and strengthening my Dependence muscle…I see that very clearly now.  It’s not easy and it really hurts.  But like any loving parent, He loves me too much to let me stay in the shallow water.   He’s calling me to the deep water where my Faith continues to be tested. 

Even if the silence remains, it is time to step out and TRUST, again, that HE is good enough and able enough to provide exactly what is needed inside of His perfect will…not just once in my life but over and over as I seek Him first.   

The more I seek Him and know, the more I fall in love and know that I can depend on HIM.  

He’s a good good Father.

“For the Mighty One has done great things for me – Holy is His Name.”  Luke 1:49