When the Scaffolding Falls

Once you start asking what spirituality is and how meaning gets built, the next honest question is: what happens when spirituality and meaning lose cohesion?  Or another way to put it, what happens when that story breaks? (Right after that comes the question we’ll tackle next time...what religion does with all of this…when it helps, when it harms, and why so many of us have complicated feelings about it.) No one really tells you when you’re young and ambitious and full of hopes, dreams, and expectations that, eventually, life will hand you a chapter (or several chapters) you did not audition for and often are unprepared for how to read the dang chapter!  When we are presented with these...life opportunities, they can often end up with us experiencing grief and moral injury.

In my experience, grief has a face...two to be exact.  My dad died first...about a year-and-a-half before my mom did. I still have the last photo I took of him after he left the ICU, recovering from a serious stroke. I snapped it, left, and never saw him alive again. With my mom, it’s different...because, well, my mom was quite different (in the best way possible). I saved all these ridiculous emails she used to forward me...you know the ones I’m talking about...half news, half inspirational, half “you’ve got to see this,” and somehow always 100% my mom. Sometimes I’ll go back and read them just to feel connected to her again...like she just sent them and I’m catching up. It’s been ten years now, and almost everything still reminds me of them. Which is both sweet, but it can also be quite brutal.

Then there’s a different kind of breaking...what some people call moral injury. It’s not just pain, but the pain of a violated conscience. It’s what happens when you witness harm, participate in something that betrays your values, or realize you couldn’t protect someone you wanted to protect. For me, it’s been all of the above, particularly with my second career in Christian ministry: betrayal by leadership, harm done by “the institution”, hypocrisy that made my stomach turn, moments where “the right thing” got drowned out by politics, image management, and the endless quest for money and power. Eventually I left... “politely” shown the door, really...from the tradition that first introduced me to the beauty of Jesus. That’s a weird sentence to write. It still stings...quite a bit. But it has also shaped me.

And then there’s this old-timey word...lament...or, for most of my life, my non-experience of lament. I was formed like most of us...by family, culture, church, the whole air we breathe...to believe that whining doesn’t fix anything. To be fair, there’s a kernel of truth in that. But lament isn’t complaining. Lament is what happens when you stop pretending everything is fine and tell the truth about what hurts...without numbing it, decorating it, or rushing to a silver lining.  A lot of us were taught to skip lament and go straight to “I’m good.” Or straight to productivity. Or straight to spiritual bypassing—using spiritual words to avoid human feelings. And if that’s you, you’re not broken; that’s how you’ve been formed and guided to think and behave.

What I’m learning...slowly, sometimes stubbornly...is that when our stories breaks, we don’t heal by pretending the break didn’t happen. We heal by telling the truth about it, letting it be witnessed, and finding practices that can hold it without crushing us. Different traditions have known this for a long time.

In Islam, there’s a deep tradition of honest prayer under pressure...turning toward God with raw truth, not flashy performance. Patience (sabr) isn’t a denial of what is happening, but rather an expression of endurance with integrity. Mercy (rahma) isn’t shallow sentiment, but the steady compassion that can hold pain without becoming pain. In Buddhism, the starting point is basically, “Life includes suffering” (dukkha). This can seem like a downer thing to center a spirituality around, but that is the reality of the human experience. The practice isn’t to pretend it away, but to meet it with awareness and compassion...so suffering doesn’t turn into cruelty, numbness, or endless grasping. And in many Indigenous traditions, grief is not something you “get over” in private. It’s held in circle. It’s witnessed. It’s given a place in the community. Sometimes with stories, sometimes with tears, sometimes with silence. The point is that your pain is not a personal failure or weakness. It’s part of being human, and part of being human means that ALL of your human experience...belongs in the village.

So what I’m learning is that lament is not whining at all. Lament is really an expression of spiritual maturity. It’s how we refuse to let pain make us less human.  The truth is, and we all know this if we’re honest with ourselves, we don’t choose when grief shows up. It chooses us. It pops up in the grocery store. In a song. In a smell. In a random forwarded email from 2010 that makes me laugh and cry at the same time. Usually, what helps isn’t some perfect spiritual technique... it’stalking with Morgan (my all-to-patient wife), my kids (they are both pretty wise for their age), or a few trusted friends (you know who you are).  Often, it’s me just saying, “This is heavy today”...and them often responding with “I hear you”.  

That being said, there are a few spiritual practices that humans have utilized over the millennia across different faith traditions all over the world.  (BONUS...modern science has studied and affirmed them.)

The Two-Sentence Lament (Private | 2 minutes) Grab a note on your phone or the nearest piece of paper and write two sentences:

“What hurts right now is ______.” 

“What I wish were true is ______.”

That’s it. Don’t solve it. Don’t spiritualize it. Just name it. (And remember, naming isn’t whining...naming is courage...and naming something, even with just yourself, is a healthy and necessary practice.

The Witness Text (Relational | 10 minutes) Text one safe person: “Hey...can I share something heavy for two minutes? No fixing, no advice. I just need someone to witness it.” 

Then share the short version. 

A safe person will usually respond with something simple like, “I’m here,” or “I hear you.” You’d be shocked at how healing it is to have your story held without being edited.

The Hand-on-Heart Reset (Embodied | 5 minutes) Put one hand on your chest and one on your belly. Take five slow breaths. 

On each exhale, say (out loud if you can): “This matters.”

Because it does. Your grief matters. Your conscience matters. Your story matters.

And if tears show up, that’s not bad... that’s actually a great thing... that’s your body finally getting person to tell the truth the best way it knows how to.

If you’re feeling like your story is broken right now, you’re not behind, or failing, or weak. You’re in the part of the human experience we ALL experience, and we ALL try to skip....the part that often makes us tender enough to love well...and be loved well.  Oh, and just in case you didn’t, we here to witness your story, so reach out to us if you want to share it, because we’ll stay for your story....always.

So...until next time...may you stop arguing with your own sadness, let yourself be human, and remember: lament doesn’t fix everything… but it does keep your heart from turning to stone. 

Grace and peace... even in lament,

Sam