We often find ourselves in the middle of anxiety, constant busyness, and the weight of everyday life. It’s not always easy to find the words to describe what we are feeling.
This is the video version of my personal Psalm of Lament—a cry out to God in the chaos. I wrote about it recently, linked here. If a 90 second video is more your speed than reading, I’ve got you covered. Just press play below.
If you’ve ever felt weary, anxious, or overwhelmed, may these words give voice to what your heart longs to say.
If this resonates with you, I’d love to know—feel free to share your own words of lament in the comments.
Two incredibly smart and gifted ladies, Summer and Christi, write the Bible studies and we attend the same church. Their goal is to put the Bible back in Bible studies.
My volunteering with Seek and Find Studies centered around writing (surprise) 🙂 and creating social media content.
I really enjoyed the volunteer work. In fact, it showed and reminded me of the talents God has given me.
Seek and Find studies gave me a way to utilize those talents. Which led me back here to perspectiveconfessions.com to dust off my blog and begin writing consistently.
One of the Bible studies is about the book of Psalms. Through this Bible study, I learned there are different types of psalms, such as psalms of:
Praise
Lament
Gratitude
Repentance
Wisdom
If you study psalms of lament in the Bible, you will find that there are 4 common elements:
a call for help
a lament
a petition
words of praise
Lament is an expression of profound sorrow, pain, or confusion.
In our world today, there are many things to lament about. Things that we feel are not in our control.
Psalms of lament express deep human affliction. They encourage us to call on the Lord in the midst of our struggles and teach us how to lament. Yes, we can read and study psalms of lament already written, such as Psalms 22.
We can also write our own psalms of lament.
I wrote a lament based upon a prompt while working through the Bible study.
Here is my version:
Why, God, do I lie awake at night tormented by fearful thoughts? The most worrisome and terrifying thoughts creep into my mind when the lights turn out, the sun sleeps and the house becomes quiet…that’s when my mind springs awake.
All corners of fear that can be pushed aside or buried in the daylight spring forth in new, vengeful life in the darkness.
Where are you? Lord, where is your light in the darkness? Don’t you see me? Don’t you hear my prayers to make it stop?
My mind, body, and soul is tired from the day’s grind.
Rushing, anywhere and everywhere.
Every waking moment filled with work, meetings, appointments, FaceTime, Zoom calls, endless and incessant social media scrolling, family, friends, traffic, errands, text messages, phone calls, notifications, emails, instant messages, children, grandchildren, church, studies, events, sports, on demand streaming.
Not all of these are bad, there is goodness in them, but not all at once and all the time.
I am poured out all the time and yet consuming all the time.
Consuming the emptiness of the busyness of instantaneous, on demand life that commands my attention to the right now and over here and what about this?!
Everything and nothing is what life demands and gives.
So much so that I don’t even know who I am or who you are, Lord.
I lie awake at night with tormenting thoughts because I’ve not given myself any time or space to process, rest, recharge, or center and ground myself in you, God.
I’m reminded of Psalms 23. You provide rest and everything I need.
You restore.
You are good, God, so, so good.
Help me find a different rhythm founded upon you.
You truly do fill up my empty being.
Grant me wisdom to discern life giving and life taking tasks.
Give me the discipline to go against the flow of the world.
Thank you for the rest, restoration, and reconciliation that you give freely to those looking and asking you for it.
