The Melody In Pain
Sometimes I cuss in my conversations with God.
When I’m at the end of it all…
Weeping…
Sobbing…
Doubting…
Screaming…
Cursing…
Retreating…
And you know what?
I think that He hears a melody in those screams that He never hears on a Sunday morning.
The melody of authenticity in pain is so much better than an inauthentic melody of praise on a Sunday morning.
HE will comfort you.
And HE will sing with you.
So don’t be scared to sing in your screams ragamuffins.
Your haunting melody is music to His ears.
Los
RAIN IT DOWN
I really like what you’re sayin’! Kool way to look at it!
JSK
THanks!
I was thinking a while back you asked us where we find our identity? Or maybe how we find out who we are in God…can’t remember for sure and I couldn’t find it in a quick search. Anyway…
When that question came up, my gut reaction was that I find my identity in crying out desperately to God. I didn’t have a very good grasp on that until I read this post. Now it seems obvious:
Of course you would find your identity when you are crying out desperately to God: then you have stripped off all the other layers of “me” and you are most yourself. Most like the person God created you to be.
Of course God hears the melody in my pain – that’s MY song and He wrote it for ME. And you know what else – it’s one of His favorites.
So thanks, Los. For being thought provoking. I’ll keep singing if you will.
That was better than the post itself.
Brilliant
Like that lots.
Thanks
Wow. Thanks for posting this; you’ve put into words what I’ve been dealing with over the last month or so. The frustration of not being able to express myself aside from weeping and cursing can be overwhelming, so thanks for letting me know that I’m not alone in all of that. I will say though that the song that has carried me through all of this has been Switchfoot’s ‘Sing It Out’(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlqQUtOcJVo). I literally listened to this song on repeat for days and reading your post I was reminded of the lifeline it represented.
Thanks again Los!
That song it amazing!!!!!!!!
That song is crazy awesome. I just heard it for the first time from your link. I’ll be hanging on to that one.
So Right!!! God wants us to bear our souls to Him. Until we break down the walls we build daily, we can not be transparent with Him. If follow Christ’s example, we must die to this flesh and to this world in order to truly serve him. Church teaches us how to cope with the wrecks we are… God wants us to shed the wreck we live in, and that always causes pain… When Christ shed the flesh that he had lived in, there was…grieving to the point of near death (Matt. 26:38)…sweating blood(Luke 22:44)…fighting (Luke 22:50)…screaming (Luke 24:36; Mark 15:33)…darkness (Mark15:33)…and an earthquake (Matt.27:51).
Great scriptures Matias
That’s inspirational. Explains why some people are just wrecked when they hear a song that reminds them of their real life experiences/problems.
Man, I need that. I so try to sugar-coat what I’m feeling when I talk to God. What he really wants is intimacy, and there is nothing fake about intimacy…Thank you so much for posting this.
DO it JOn.
One of my favorite things I’ve heard recently about authenticity with God came from the mouth of a 3 year old boy whose grandfather passed away… when the parents told the 3 year old that “Jesus decided to take Pop to Heaven with him”.
Naturally the little boy was sad about losing his grandfather. Evidently he was angry too…. His response was “I’m gonna punch Jesus!” The little boy’s father came back with, “Reed, Jesus has certainly endured much worse than punching… I’m sure he will be okay with that.”
I love that!
Good stuff! So true…thanks for sharing your heart!
yupThanks for stopping by Michael.thanks for reading it
Wow! All I can say is WOW! Thanks so much for that perspective.
Dude…I have been reading this for a few months now and I appreciate your transparency. I think you hit it right on. God wants us to stop “doing” and start “being”. Thanks again.
I love this post, I don’t think that God is ever scared of us… I’ll never forget a conversation I had with my former fiance during a difficult time, where I said I was angry with God and I didn’t understand how such things could happen, I shared with him that I was truly mad at God that I wanted to scream and yell and shout at Him until my voice was hoarse. My ex fiance was horrified, but somehow I knew, I knew that God was big enough, and loving enough, and good enough to hear all my yelling and shouting and screaming, to take all of my anger and absorb it into Himself, until the tempest of emotion had passed me by and what I was left with was not knowing the Why’s and How’s, but knowing How Much I Am Loved….
This is beautiful. I instantly thought, “as humans, we wear so many masks throughout one day. We try to hide emotions, pain, our true feelings, we are rarely our true selves with everyone we come into contact with. Why even bother attempting to mask your true self or feelings with your very creator? He already knows your thoughts and what you’re REALLY wanting to tell Him, so go ahead, lay it on Him. I’m pretty sure He will be able to carry the weight of your pain / anguish far easier than you or I ever will.
Los –
I just wanna say thanks – thanks for always be honest and showing us great things. This conversation reminds me so clearly about a time 7 years ago where I was sure God would strike me dead.
My Dad had a subdural hematoma and it looked pretty likely he was done for the world. What did I do? Well I yelled, wept, screamed and cussed a blue streak to the Almighty. As Jen says above the layers of “me” fell away. I never felt wrath or fury – instead just felt Jesus holding me and allowing me to rage until I calmed down. I guess like Molly says He had dealt with far worse.
As for singing, How He loves us and Draw me nearer have been two songs appearing in my prayers lately – messy yes – but honest.
As already said so well – that is all Jesus wants from us anyway.
I have really been thinking on being genuine with God and sometimes through my pain when I don’t care what I look like or say to him. That is when my relationship grows with him. My darkest moments with God are the ones that keep our relationship real and not completely fake.
One of the best pieces of advice one of my mentors gave me was for me to write out everything that I felt I couldn’t say outloud – including the cuss words – and then burn the pages later. Nothing felt more real than those scrawled words on a page.
It was true prayer and true transparency.
And boy did it feel good to burn those pages later.
Have you been peaking at my lyrics journal?
We are only authentic when we come to the end of our charades, and usually that is at the end of our rope, unfortunately.
tks i needed to hear that
im tone deaf… so i think my singing voice and my screams sound the same to Him =]
I totally understand what you’re saying. And I’m not judging…cuz the Father knows I have cussed a blue streak many, many times.
But, thinking (again cause I’m a mom) from my human perspective, I can handle my kids anger…no problem. But I will not tolerate disrespect.
I’m just saying I hope we can come to a place where authenticity doesn’t equate to cussing at God. Yes, I get it, He understands and yes, He might even appreciate the honesty. But don’t you think it’s sad that that’s the only way He can get honesty from us?
Not trying to start a debate about cussing (please, no more debates for now)…just expressing my thoughts is all.
Good points.
LOVE your thoughts.
I also know that is not the only way HE can get honesty from me.
I’m honest to Him in my joy AND pain.
Luckily my pain is trumped by the joy of the Lord.
But when the pain comes…and it does…I’m not going to edit my conversation when He knows what I’m thinking anyways.
I concur
and in those moments after you’ve screamed your voice raw, cried out why and what do you want from me and who are you, flung aside the pretense of being a good nice calm rational self-sufficient person who can handle everything that comes your way thank you very much–in those moments, as the sound of your voice fades, you hear it.
the whisper of the holy spirit.
–in those moments, when you’ve thrashed and railed and fought all you can, and now are spent; as your body stills, you feel it.
the gentle breath of revival.
–in those moments, in the calm not before but after the storm, when the sky has rained all it can, you see it.
the first break in the clouds.
and then the wind gains strength, and carries the clouds away; and the light spreads, magnified and reflected in every wet drop, so that it seems to shine from everything. and as the warmth from the sun starts to spread, and the crisp clean smell of the air hits your nose, you find that you can be grateful, in some way, for the storm, because of what you discovered in its aftermath.
There truly is no calm like that after a storm.
Thanks for this post.
This reminds me of the new Amy Grant song Better than a Hallelujah. That song’s been stuck in my head for days. Loving it. Thanks for the reminder that it’s okay to pour out our pain to God.
yes! was my thought as well – just listened to that again today … co-written by Sara Hart – met her at songwriter’s night at Tin Roof in Nashville – amazing singer, musician & writer
“We pour out our miseries
God just hears a melody
Beautiful the mess we are
The honest cries of breaking hearts
Are better than a Hallelujah.”
Carlos, this is hard for me to say.
I sometimes feel like if I scream out to God asking “Why?!” i already know the answer–because He’s trying to teach me something from it.
It’s almost like my screams are stifled by my over-analytical mind. I find it hard to be genuine, at times. It’s REALLY confusing and hard to process.
It is CBP.
It is hard.
But remember.
God is not into the business of using suffering to teach lessons.
Yes it does sometimes…
But he would rather comfort than teach any day
Powerful stuff, los, as usual here. So many of the Psalms reflect this same thing, but I think we gloss over the pain in those songs most of the time. Ps. 3 is one of my favorite lament psalms, where David is running for his life from his own son. I love that our Scriptures are so real about this relationship with God. Thank you for being so real too.
This is…wow. Thanks for that. I just keep crying and crying as God works on my heart and my life. Thanks for the reminder that it’s okay that I keep approaching Him in tears. I know there’s joy on the other side, but I think He and I are both appreciating this authentic music of misery in our relationship right now.
Reminds me of something Lauren Winner said in her book “Girl Meets God”:
I cried, I think, because I was coming to understand in a new way just how much was required of me, how much God was going to strip away all my everything, like silver polish taking the tarnish off old forks. I cried because I know more and more how Chekhov was right, how we are all running around desperate to make connections with one another, but mostly we are all just estranged. Because I know more and more that this glass here is so very dark, that this really is a long loneliness, that it is both lonely and long.
Sometimes I feel God has taken a paring knife to me. I know the way an apple feels.
Gosh! Cussing at god? Really? Do you think he can take it?
“No one can comprehend what goes on under the sun. Despite all his efforts to search it out, man cannot discover its meaning. Even if a wise man claims he knows, he cannot really comprehend it.”
LOS,
I just want to say, Thank YOU, for being a MALE blogger with REAL and Christ-centered things to say!
that’s all.(well, not really, but for now)..LOL….
#$%@!!, apparently I forget my name on occasion….
I love how frequently in scripture (especially in the Psalms) we see that God knows our deepest groans. The word-study often reveals groans to mean “deep sighs”.
It reminds me that God knows my deepest sighs when I have no words. When my heart aches and groans because I have no more words; only a deep sigh, God hears!
I also once had a student (I work in college ministry) tell me in his prayer journal that week, he almost wrote a cuss word but then he didn’t.
I interrupted him and asked, “What? Why not? Do you think that because you didn’t write it out on the paper, God didn’t know what your heart and mind actually thought?”
We laughed.
I believe prayer is talking with God, or, as a I once heard someone say a number of years ago, “Prayer is a continual conversation with God.” That being said, it is refreshing to read some of the conversations that some of the “greats” had with God. People like Moses, and Abraham, and Giddeon, etc. God is looking for what is on our heart, not what someone else wrote down that we are supposed to use as a “prayer.” I can’t remember my kids ever coming to me and reading a written petition – they came to me in whatever state they were in – happy, sad, frustrated, mad, etc. We bring our heart to God becasuse He is our Father.
Interesting, how I don’t have any experiences of God flinching about the intensity of emotions, but lots of experience with people flinching.
Through out my daily pain, physical and emotional, God encourages me to sing. Stretching my arms out high, God is encouraging me to grow – in his love, and as myself. Broken and humbled in my human skin.
Sounds like you wrestle with God sometimes. It seems He wants it sometimes. Good post Los
So true… a song that got me through so much during the most difficult time in my life was “Never Let Go” by Crowder…
The honesty of admitting things are bad, really bad, and oh how my soul aches… and at some point in time trusting that in the worst moment, God is actually there and in it with you, holding you up, helping you breath, helping you live… well frankly, it saved my soul. I was taught that when bad stuff happened it was all the devils fault or a lack of faith and that outlook made my darkest days really tough, now on the other end of that theological slippery slope I see that when I cry out… God is with me, and when I weep, there He is again, when I triumph, He holds my hand up… and when I’m broken, He is there to collect the pieces and put me back together again…
It’s funny because in all of this learning, I realized that when i was most honest with God about my frustrations, disappointments, and fears… He met me in them rather than asking me to get rid of them first!!! Kind of like thinking we need to clean up our lives before we come to God, NO He does the cleaning… Same principle here, we don’t have to have everything all figured out and feeling good before we come to God, we bring him our frustrations, fears, and disappointments and He brings beauty to our mess… (Rom 8:28)
He Never Let’s Go!
Peace
Tony
You hit the nail on the head with this. He knows what’s in our heart- we can’t hide it from Him. But being willing to SHARE it with Him is what draws us closer. Beautiful post.
Recently i’ve been dealing with deep, painful issues. My parent’s divorce has changed my life. It has also forced me to come out of denial about the abuse and neglect i suffered at their hands. I can’t pretend anymore that they were good parents. The other day i cried for 2 hours ( and i am NOT a crier) wailing to God, asking Him simply “why?”. Why did I have they family i had? Why couldn’t I have had a loving family? Why did i have to suffer for their actions? In that time, I learned that God wants us to tell Him what we need. He knows already, but He wants us to communicate it to Him. And in communicating that to Him, and being honest and open, He answered. I finally came to the realization that Christ is the true father that iv’e always needed. That His people (those who truly make the Church their home) are my family. When you cry out to God with sincerity and broken-ness , He answers
This post reminded me of the movie that came out a few years back with Robert Duvall called, “The Apostle”. Kind of an odd movie that changed the way I prayed for the better.
I needed to read this. Thank you for your honesty.
Thanks…I needed to hear that today. Its what’s in my heart and it’s good that you have said it out loud!
So true. Reading a Beth Moore book. I love what she says about God. “He knows how hard it is to be us.” I think God is big enough to hear all of our emotions. The joy and the pain. Just look at the Bible, those guys definitely held nothing back from God.
Los, I love your honesty. One of the greatest lessons I was taught years ago… My wife and I lost a son and I was devastated… My pastor at the time said, “Kelly, what you need to do is go out in the middle of the woods and just cuss and scream your anger at God.” I’ve found out, He already knows what we’re feeling and thinking anyway. Love ya bro and love your honesy.
Kelly
Damn Los. Authentic. That’s all I can say. Authentic.
Yes. God does hear us in are pain. We sometime let are pride get in the way so we feel bad if we think God does not hear us. HE DOES HEAR US. God hears all of what we think and say. Sing in your pain, God could just be waiting for you to get to that point, so he can do something in you.
Wow authenticity is so contagious. Been following you for a while man and enjoy the conversation happening here. Love your honesty, heart, worship and ability to resist the idea of being bigger than you really are. Love you man and not in a weird awkward love, but a love that is inspired so deep because you love the Father that much. Thanks for saying what most of us do in the sacred spaces of our offices/homes/bedrooms etc.
I thought I was the only one… I have gotten to a point where in the midst of those times of quarreling God is there with me holding me in the midst of the anger, and tears that fall. I think at times we don’t think God is listening to us, on the contrary He is there all along.
Thanks for this post sir