by Veronica Gould

“Come, Bring Your Burdens to God”

Psalm 22:1-5, Hebrews 4:15-16

It wasn’t until I met Sarah that I considered the power of yelling at God. It sounded, at first, absurd to me, if not even blasphemous. How could I yell at God?! But Sarah shared her own story with me, how she had struggled to find where she belonged in the church. How she had longed to have a relationship with God, but she found herself frustrated by silence.

When Sarah began yelling at God, she discovered prayer that was more authentic than she had ever experienced. Over the years, I have turned to this tactic in hard times. When I have run out of pretty words, I get to the heart of prayer. Bringing my burdens to God has become an integral part of my own faith.

This week was mental health awareness week, a time set aside to draw attention to the mental and emotional challenges that many of us face every day– often in silence. It is a time to speak out and be honest about our struggles. About the things that drain us. The darknesses from our past that haunt us. The fears and anxieties about our future that seem to follow us wherever we go. Every one of us carries the burdens of a life lived, sometimes courageously, sometimes with exhaustion.

Sometimes, I want to hide the things that hurt. Being direct about my feelings is not always easy for me. It is a challenge to be vulnerable. How do I determine who to trust with my pain? How can I avoid being a burden?

If we are honest, the church has not always had a perfect track record when it comes to mental health. We have excluded those whose mental illnesses make us uncomfortable. We have denied the legitimacy of therapy or medications to treat mental illness. We have accused people of having little faith because they experienced depression or anxiety which made it hard to trust God. All of these have been barriers to healing and wholeness.

But the most offensive barrier of all, to me, is the implication that to be a “good Christian,” we have to always be optimistic. This barrier says, come back to God when you’re healthy, when you’re happy again, when you’re done with the things that are troubling you. But this is the exact opposite of the faith we see in the psalms!

As it turns out, yelling at God is a time honored tradition in the scriptures. Theologians and scholars like to call it “lament,” that crying-out-in-the-wilderness that is the result of equal parts desperation and hope.

And the psalms are full of lament. In fact, out of 150 psalms, almost half are classified as lament.

The words of Psalm 22 are piercing. At times, they accuse God of abandoning the psalmist. Other verses confess the deep trauma they have undergone. Throughout the psalm, we also find a second, hopeful voice, which says “yet”. In the midst of suffering, there is a shred of hope.

But hope does not silence pain. Hope does not tell pain she has no place here. Hope does not try to turn pain into healing before she is ready.

There is a legitimacy to the suffering in Psalm 22. It isn’t glossed over or minimized. It isn’t sugar coated. If you read the whole psalm, you’ll find imagery that is downright gruesome. But, if we’re being honest, sometimes life is gruesome.

The psalm shows us the things we don’t want to see: the hurt we hide. The shame we’d rather not show anyone else. The silent fears of our hearts.

But these words, these gruesome, gritty words, are also the words that Jesus spoke from the cross. In his last moments, Jesus cried out– Eloi, eloi, lema sebachthani! My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?

Had God forsaken Jesus? By no means! Neither has God forsaken us, for we are all God’s beloved children!

But there will be times when these words– my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Will be your most authentic prayer. Pray these words. Do not keep silent.

In times of distress, when we are angry or hurting, some of us may have an impulse to run away from God. To hide. To stay silent. Maybe we feel like we don’t have a right to be angry with God. Perhaps we feel too ashamed to pray. I have felt all of this. Yet the psalmist’s words are a reminder:

God can handle our pain. God can handle our anger. We don’t have to hide our hurt from God. She knows it personally.

The psalmist’s words– Jesus words– our words– do not condemn us. They reveal our need for God and our hope in God. It is a spiritual practice to name our pain. To confess the very real things of this world that wound us. It is a sign of faith to declare these things to God. To have the audacity to demand a better world. A world where we have a voice, where we are heard. We join the Israelites crying out in Egypt when we say, “God, Hear me!”

The good news for us is that we do not have to be perfect to come before God. We don’t need to freshen up our tear-stained faces and runny mascara. We don’t need to hide our hurt. God already knows it. And God wants to hear. God wants to be close to us, even in our suffering. Even enough to experience our human pain, to live in a fragile human body, to cry out on the cross.

When we struggle, we are not alone, because we have a savior who has been tempted just as we are. Who struggled just as we do. Whose grace gives us the confidence to come before God right now, exactly as we are.

We can bring our whole selves to God, our weaknesses and our strengths. Our hurt and our hope.

Come, bring your burdens to God.