By Esther Fleece
Suck it up. Fake it til you make it. It's not really that bad. What will people think? If people really knew...
All these statements have probably either been said to us or by us to ourselves. I know so many of us try to cover up all our junk, stuff in the pain, put our best face on and never let anyone know what is really going on.
Esther Fleece wrote this book to give us the go ahead on giving ourselves permission to not be okay all of the time. She wants the word lament to become part of our vocabulary and life. We don't need to be self-sufficient and fake, especially to God, who knows all and desires us to share with Him our raw honest prayers.
Ask yourself this: "How many of us mistakenly believe that our strength is what God wants from us, when it is our brokenness that actually attracts Him most."
When life doesn't go the way we wanted or tragedy hits that doesn't mean that God is punishing us. God grieves with us. Esther says "Pain can serve a purpose if pain leads us to Him".
Esther shares her personal story of the scars that growing up in very negative environments left on her. How she sucked it up until she couldn't anymore. And then she learned the process of lament. She says that "the greatest gift that has come from my suffering is a deeper understanding of the character of God and His thoughts toward me."
God wants to be in relationship with us. He wants us to share our sad. He doesn't want us to learn to cope with our pain. "Coping is a cheap substitute for healing." And God wants to heal us. Healing is a process and it isn't an easy one. It is okay to ask Him hard questions. "He'd rather have my honest questions than my faked spiritual strength."
We make ourselves believe that if we do lament that it has to be a private thing. We don't want anyone to know our weaknesses. Esther says that "isolation is one of the most harmful thing we can do to ourselves." It is important that we do open our hearts that it is to people who love us unconditionally, so we need to have those people in our lives. "There is a divine healing that occurs when we confess things to other people. The enemy doesn't have as much power to play around in our minds when our laments come to light."
Going through the process of lament is vital to healing, but eventually the season of lament comes to an end and our lives with hopes and dreams can take flight. "God wants our sad for a reason: He wants to give us something new in return." We draw closer to Him and we learn to have compassion on those who are going through the lament process. We learn to worship God in all seasons.
Remember this:
"God's grace meets us where we are, not where we pretend to be."
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