FamilyLife Today®

Speaker 1

Once I say amen after my lament, I don't feel any better. Usually the problem is unresolved. I've taken it to the Lord, but he hasn't shaken a wand and changed anything.

I have to live in this uncomfortable emotion for a period of time. What am I going to do now?

Speaker 2

I think this is going to be a good conversation.

Speaker 3

Oh, that's how you got to start it.

Speaker 2

That's right.

Speaker 3

Okay. Why is that?

Speaker 2

Because we're gonna talk about some things that people don't generally talk about often, and yet all of us experience it.

Speaker 3

Okay.

Speaker 2

Grief, depression, anxiety. How do we deal with that?

Speaker 3

Sounds like a really fun day, doesn't it?

Speaker 2

But necessary.

Speaker 3

Oh, it's really, really necessary. And we don't have one guest. We have two guests, two friends. Yeah. Mark Vogop and Christine Chappelle, who know each other. We didn't even know this when we.

Speaker 4

It's pretty crazy.

Speaker 3

Paired you guys up to do different interviews. Mark in the morning, Christine in the afternoon.

And then you're like, we know each other. And you both have written some of the best stuff I've ever read. I don't, you know, what's out there in this area. I've never read anything this good.

How have you bonded about this? Because obviously you've listened and read each other's stuff and you think similarly, what's the common bond?

Speaker 4

I think grief, struggle, loss. I approach it from a largely theological, pastoral framework.

And then Christine, I think, has really served the church well by figuring out how to drill that down into some really specific, timely implications that are the real world in which people live, taking the concept of struggle more generally or grief more kind of globally, if you will.

And then, okay, so how do we actually. How does this work out in motherhood? Do you agree with that?

Speaker 1

Yeah. And even just the idea of building a theology of sadness or sorrow, I think is also part of where this lament conversation comes in. Because sometimes we can be focused on loss related grief, you know, from death or, you know, in Mark's case, the stillbirth of his daughter, among other things.

But we see sorrow express itself or manifest itself in so many other different areas of life that have nothing to do with death per se, but certainly have to do with the fall and brokenness touching our lives. And how do we respond to those situations when the hurt is real, but the hope is real too?

And so how do we learn how to hold both those things at the same time? Which is what "Dark Clouds, Deep Mercies" does such a great job at helping us to explore. And then I just take that and continue to, as Mark said, try to hammer that into real life.

As a mom who may be navigating grief and depression and trying to see what the scriptures have to say about how we can take our next step during those seasons, do you think many?

Speaker 2

People have a theology of suffering? Because I'm not. I don't even know if I've really heard that term, often a theology of.

Speaker 1

Suffering or a theology of sorrow. Yeah, you know, there's a lot of different types of sorrow that the scriptures talk about. And so just getting comfortable with the fact that that's a reality, that sadness is a reality, and that sometimes that sadness is an appropriate response to the situation that we're in.

I think as Christians, the temptation can be, well, this is a very negative feeling emotion, and actually I shouldn't have it because I have hope in the Lord. And so now we're trying to force ourselves to live in this space of hope, and we're inept at navigating this space of sorrow, which the Bible doesn't say one or the other. It says, here's how you can grieve with hope in Christ.

That, I think, is something that we all have to learn. Right? The Lord helps us to learn how to hold those things at the same time, which, you know, Pastor Mark's book has been instrumental in my own life in learning how to navigate that. But I know in the lives of so many others, too, who have read what he's had to say about lamentations.

Speaker 3

Now, when does. I know you've written about Christine, grief is dangerous. When does it become dangerous or lament? I mean, as we're talking to Mark about it, can it become dangerous?

Speaker 2

Well, even in your book, Christine, you're talking about depression and suicidal ideation. Mark, you're. You've really been studying lament. How do those two. Is that mean, Dave? Like, how do they fit together?

Speaker 1

Yeah, I don't think grief in and of itself is dangerous, but I think that there are things that can happen when we are responding to loss that can become dangerous. When I say that, I mean it can begin to spiral us downward into a cycle of despair or hopelessness.

In *Midnight Mercies*, I talk about the distinction between a sadness that is safe and one that is not. Through lament and community, we can take our sorrows and cast our burdens on the Lord, talking to Him about our emotional overwhelm and the distress that we have. This process allows us to move through the movements of lament that Pastor Mark has discussed and written about before. In a way, that is a safe kind of sadness. Those are good, productive responses to very real emotions that may very well be the right response to what you're going through.

Even in Psalm 16:1, David says, "Preserve me, O God, for in you I take refuge." The idea of turning to the Lord in our sorrow is actually a safe way of processing our sadness. However, things can become dangerous when, for one reason or another, the Lord doesn't seem like a real and present refuge in the midst of our distress.

Because of the discomfort that we feel and the impulse to escape our overwhelming emotions or discomfort, we may seek out burden relief in other ways. We might turn to other refuges, so to speak, or other means of getting comfort or safety, or whatever it is we're looking for in our sorrow. This could even include numbing that emotion. In my story, that was self-harm and alcohol, but for other people, it could be pornography, drugs, food, or other distractions.

These responses to our sorrow and grief can create a distance between us and the Lord. In that way, I would call those dangerous or unproductive, and sometimes even destructive responses to the grief feelings that we are experiencing.

Speaker 2

Mark, you've. You've been a pastor for years, have seen when it turns to a dangerous side.

Speaker 4

Well, I'd like to distinguish between. I want to preserve lament as a language that moves me to trust.

So in your question, you're connecting synonymously lament with sorrow. And I want to say that I've seen when someone's sorrow has, yes, headed in a direction that is unhealthy and is dangerous, or they're trying to find a solution to their sense of hopelessness in all kinds of ways.

Lament is the language that actually leads us to a renewed confidence in the Lord. So I argue that if you just complain or if you're just hopeless and you never end in trust, you actually haven't lamented.

So that's what I want to preserve.

Speaker 2

Yeah, that's good. That's a good distinction.

Speaker 4

So I think the point of your question, though, is having seen that. Yes. And I think if you've ever walked through grief, it's not only that you have seen it; you experience it as this sense of hopelessness. Like, I don't know if I could feel differently again. And what if I don't?

I think one of the helpful things is that in sections that are lament, which lead us to the right conclusion, there's a lot of language that sounds like folks are really struggling. For example, in Lamentations 3, it says, "He's made my teeth grind on gravel. My soul is bereft of peace." Listen to this one: "I have forgotten what happiness is."

And so I say, "My endurance has perished, and so has my hope from the Lord." Now, that's true.

Speaker 3

Yeah.

Speaker 4

Then he says, "But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope." And so to me, that's lament. That's lament.

And the question is, on the pivot, where is everyone going to pivot somewhere? The question is, what do you pivot to? Or you asked the question in a minute about a theology of suffering. I would argue everyone has a theology of suffering. The question is whether or not it's a biblical theology.

So even if I'm not a Christian, I have a theology of suffering. There are things that I believe about the world and the universe that are fundamental and presuppositions and the kinds of things that I apply to my life.

And the question is whether or not there's a biblical view of what suffering is. So the pivot, I think, gets dangerous or unhelpful or destructive when the pivot becomes something that's not biblical or the solution becomes something that ultimately is disconnected from who the Lord is.

Speaker 2

I guess my next question would be then, if we're lamenting, well, we're confessing and telling God this is what's going on.

And even, like, we're in it, we're in the muck.

But then we turn and we pivot to trust him.

Will we ever get to a dangerous place?

Speaker 1

Well, I don't. I don't know that you could ever predict the future about. Like, when, you know, how can the dots connect, you know, on a situation that you haven't been given the grace to face yet?

But I will speak maybe on that just in my own personal experience, because like I mentioned before in the past and Mark has written on, you know, the necessity of waiting, of learning how to wait and lament being an instrumental part of that. Learning to wait and growing spiritually allows you to wait with hope and not just wait with being angry about it or anxious about it or apathetic about it.

And so, for me, over the years, as I have learned to lament, instead of trying to stuff down overwhelming emotion or ignore it, or the opposite way of feeling even more hopeless because I'm feeling those overwhelming emotions to begin with, and I don't think I should.

Yeah, right. So now you're all like, you don't.

Speaker 2

Want to feel anything.

Speaker 1

Right. And so now you're all focused on your own unrighteousness. And I know that's wrong, but why?

Speaker 2

And I can't even lament well.

Speaker 1

Right, exactly. And so it's just totally self, you know, self-focused there.

But over the years of learning how to, even in the midst of that overwhelming emotion or that pain or that hurt or heartbreak, I’ve learned to put Christ at the center of those experiences instead of myself. So thinking about, you know, I'm crying out to him, I'm laying out what my complaint is. I'm asking for his help. I'm saying, "Lord, I want to trust you with this; help my unbelief."

But then you have to step into the next moment after that. And so that's really where the change, I think, for me has happened. It's okay, well, once I say amen after my lament, I usually don’t feel any better. I'm still...

Speaker 2

Good point.

Speaker 1

I'm still feeling this, this tension. The problem is unresolved. I've taken it to the Lord, but he hasn't immediately shaken a wand and changed anything. I have to live in this uncomfortable emotion for a period of time. What am I going to do now?

And so seeking to even honor Christ in the midst of that moment, I'm learning how to choose to wait on the Lord, which Mark has talked about being a choice that we make. It's not that we're doing nothing. It's like, no, this is the choice I'm making: I can't do anything, Lord. I have to trust the Lord to act.

But then the next step is entrusting myself to a faithful creator while doing good. So that working diligently component is important, instead of ending a lament and then seeking immediate relief through self-harm, through a bottle of wine, or whatever the other temptation may be to kind of self-medicate.

In those moments, I'm pivoting, as Mark was talking about, to a God-honoring response and dying to my overwhelming emotion. It's about learning to die to that compulsion of being ruled by my emotions in the moment.

Speaker 2

It's so hard.

Speaker 1

And it's hard. It's so hard. And it takes time. And guess what? It takes practice. Which means you're going to be given opportunities to have to wrestle in that tension.

Speaker 2

And I'd rather Just go eat something.

Speaker 3

Well, wouldn't we.

Speaker 1

I mean, I'm a big candy person. I would love to just eat a bunch of candy. Right? But. But that's not necessarily serving the Lord in the midst of my distress. That's not Christ serving.

Speaker 2

You just feel more shame after that.

Speaker 1

Right? Because then your stomach hurts and then you're like, oh, whatever.

Speaker 2

Wherever your hiding place is promised me.

Speaker 1

Life and it didn't deliver, you know, and so. So, yeah.

So turning away and dying to whatever choices that you would be, you know, habitually making that may be destructive is hard. It takes support, it takes time, it takes Holy Spirit empowerment.

It takes the word of God, and it ultimately, I think, takes this being willing to die to your own self.

Speaker 3

And how about. Because I've never experienced this.

If you're clinically depressed or suicidal, I. You know, you're thinking about this. You've been there.

Is it a lot different or pretty much the same thing? I mean, is it easier to dig out or harder to dig out of deep depression where you're really dark?

Speaker 1

Yeah. I mean, the opening chapter of *Midnight Mercies*, I talk about the reality that you cannot extinguish the fires of hopelessness on your own. Just as if you were having a house fire, you would call spiritual first responders. To put that fire out, you have to have the support of other people.

You know, there are instances where maybe that support is not readily available right next to you. But in my own story, the Lord has strategically placed, you know, my husband and others. And so, yeah, to try to do that. Pivoting on your own may work for a time for some, you know, but obviously we want to promote safety.

Keep me safe, preserve me, O God, for in you I take refuge. And sometimes that taking refuge in the Lord looks like trusting myself to him as I seek help from other people so that I can be physically preserved in the midst of what may be a temptation to hurt myself.

Speaker 2

Let me ask you this. You both are parents. Put your parent hats on. And you have a child suffering with depression or suicidal ideation.

Man, I've talked to a lot of parents. They're petrified and they don't know what to do.

Can you coach them? Like, what's this look like? What should they be looking for? What do they say? What do they do or not do?

Speaker 4

Yeah, I mean, that's a very important and complicated question because in some cases, you know, I think it's just helpful for parents to not panic and to realize this is a little more common than maybe what we even would realize. Particularly, you know, in certain ages within development, there's a lot going on inside the human body, and there's a lot of conflicting emotions and thoughts and new desires that are coming in. Some of this is just the normal maturation sort of process, but you have to kind of ride the wave with your kids.

So one is, I'm not saying don't take it seriously like it's a big deal, but to realize, look, this, it's actually a good thing if this issue is on the table. A friend of mine, one of our elders, once said, it's the issues that are not on the table that ought to make you really nervous. The things that are on the table—that's the key. It's important to ensure that we're having conversations about this and then trying to get to a little bit of just some of the causes. Are we talking about a physiological issue? Is there something else that's going on? Is there conflict or is there some kind of struggle that's kind of pointing us in this direction?

Not all depression or suicidal ideation is directly linked to some sin issue or something of that sort. We just need to have some conversations about what kind of issue we are talking about here. In other cases, I think there is a need to get some help from others who have experience. Sometimes parents are a little inclined to wait longer to get some help. They feel overly isolated, maybe even embarrassed or panicked.

So, it's important to stay out of the ditch of thinking it's not a big deal or treating it like a 911 kind of emergency. If there are cries for help with self-harm or consideration of self-harm, that always needs to be taken seriously. But just the in-between world is something that parents, I think, need to wisely and carefully manage—taking it seriously without completely losing their ability to be present in the moment and help walk their kids through it.

Speaker 2

It would be hard not to panic.

Speaker 1

This is something that we have walked our oldest child through, and I've written a little bit about it in the past and so thankful for where she's at today. But I was that parent. I was that parent wrestling with that sense of helplessness.

You know, I think of King Jehoshaphat saying, you know, the great horde is coming, Lord, we don't know what to do, but our eyes are on you. And that's how I felt. You know, I didn't know how to take her pain and her sorrow away.

As a parent, when our children are hurting, it's awful. It's awful. And with that, care can sometimes then become not so helpful because then we want to fix them.

Speaker 2

Yes.

Speaker 1

And as someone, if there's someone walking through depression, right, the last thing they want to feel like is they're a problem to be solved. You know, they're a person that needs to be loved.

And that's where the rubber meets the road: this person's really hard to love right now because they seem like they're pushing me away. They seem unlovable. Especially in a teen situation, they can be very prickly, you know, and it requires a lot of grace.

In those moments, we're learning how to love our kids like God has loved us when we are unlovable, when we're prickly, when we're pushing Him away. There is a gospel opportunity, even just in our own hearts as we parent children who are navigating these issues, learning how to love as Christ loves when it seems like it's really hard.

Speaker 2

Christine, is there anything that you did because you know about it, so it must have gotten on the table at some point? Is there anything you did or a parent can do to get it on the table?

You know, because some parents are clueless. They have no idea. And you're right, they can see something.

But for those of us that like to avoid any kind of conflict or pain, we're looking the other way. Like, it'll be fine. It'll be fine.

Speaker 1

Well, I don't want to say that. If you have open lines of communication with your child, if you have a great relationship with your child, then you will always be able to thwart depression or suicide attempts.

It can happen to anybody. You know, people who have parents with great relationships with their children often never saw anything coming. So I don't want to suggest that there is a formula that guarantees prevention.

Speaker 2

I wish there would be. We all want a formula as parents, right?

Speaker 1

But I do think it is important to have those open lines of communication. There is an opportunity for evangelism just day by day as you're navigating this, because you can point to the fact that there is a God, his name is Jesus, and he himself knows what it's like to feel overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.

Even being able to use these opportunities in conversation to point back to the scriptures, to the psalms that Mark has talked about, allows us to show that there's the living word that's honest about how hard life is and about how hurt we can become as we navigate our problems. Opening up those lines of communication and normalizing their experiences of sadness and grief is crucial.

A lot of times, depression is linked to loss. This may not always be death-related loss, but can also include loss of expectations or disappointments. In my daughter's case, she lost a year of school to a sudden onset autoimmune disorder. She lost the expectation she had for her seventh-grade year. Navigating those types of losses is something they need to be equipped to do.

Nobody naturally knows how to navigate this loss in a way that doesn't end in despair. We need help and guidance to be able to do that. Our children need us to walk with them.

Speaker 3

Well, I learned a new acronym today that you've got to explain. Evac. That's new. It's in your book.

Speaker 1

Yeah. So, evac comes from Pastor Mark and what he offers in "Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy." As a biblical counselor, I wanted to have something that I could remember because my memory is not so great. I changed some of the movements of lament that he offers in that book to fit evac, which is the first four letters of the word "evacuate." The idea is to evacuate or take refuge in the Lord when sorrow strikes or when we feel overwhelmed.

It's not just sorrow; it can be anxiety or any kind of overwhelming emotion where you feel like you are in deep distress. In those moments, we want to turn to the Lord first and foremost for the courage we need to take our next step. So, evac is just another way of remembering: E stands for engage, V stands for voice our complaint, A stands for ask for help, and C stands for choose to trust. This is all derived from Pastor Mark's work; I just changed a few words to fit that acronym.

You can certainly teach your child this type of language, this prayer language, showing them in the Scriptures that this is how we talk about pain. It's okay to talk about pain; it's okay to talk about sadness. We don't have to be stoic, and we don't have to bottle it up. We also don't have to blow up. There are two extremes we could fall into, and talking to the Lord about pain is something that can help us.

I don't know, Pastor Mark, if you want to add to that, but that's the acronym.

Speaker 4

Evac is much more memorable than tcat. So mine is turn, complain, ask and trust tcat. I try, tried as hard as I could to figure out.

Speaker 3

When we were talking about it today with you, I was literally trying to figure out a way because I do that a lot.

Speaker 4

Right.

Speaker 3

But yeah, evac is now I got TCAT and evac.

Speaker 4

There you go. There we go. That's awesome. Or for waiting up fast. Right?

So I think the other thing just to consider in our present day and age where a kid can get on social media and they can find some, I'll just use this term, armchair counselor, so to speak, who just starts talking in psychological terms that suddenly now sound very much like their world. There is a sense, I think, that every ailment now has an amplifier opportunity in the social media space.

As a result, sometimes teens or even adults can be experiencing some normal level of human sorrow or grief and then be immediately either convinced or grab ahold of the label, oh, I am X. In doing so, it feels like it gives them agency or even worse, identity because now they've got cultural cachet and power because they're this thing.

The tragedy of the situation is they think there's going to be hope once they find and determine that. And that doesn't normally lead to hope. That was an appropriate level of saying, oh, this is what this is. There's a label for this. There's a category like that's all true, true, true.

The challenge is the pace at which people and on their own are going about the process of just kind of labeling all of that stuff. And it ends up being a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy for some folks.

Speaker 3

I mean, I think the evac TCAT actually works. I mean, so helpful those tracks to run on that pattern.

Do we often get the E and the V out of order? Often we complain without engaging God. And you're sort of saying, no, start here so that the source of your complaint is out of a relationship and wrestling with God. Is that what you're saying?

Speaker 1

Yeah, I wouldn't say this is necessarily a formula, but I like to think of this as something that helps us to have the right posture in our pain toward the Lord. You know, so of course, if you need a framework to follow and you want to do 1, 2, 3, 4, by all means, by all means.

But in the psalms, as you read through the psalms of men and you study them, and I'm sure Pastor Mark can say more about this, it's very fluid. You know, multiple times throughout a psalm, you'll see a direct address to the Lord.

Right. All throughout different psalms, you may see a praise here and there. I mean, it's just something that can help us to have the right posture in prayer that ultimately helps us to bow down before the Lord in our pain as opposed to buck against him.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Speaker 1

You know, because we're not getting the immediate results or he's not doing what it is that we want him to be doing or accomplishing in our lives.

Speaker 3

And when you're voicing your complaint, you are engaging with God that is simultaneous, whether you know it or not. Right. And the turn often in the laments is the trust. There's a pivot. Usually it isn't early, usually it's later. Right.

Speaker 4

I mean, it depends. Normally it is. But you know, I was even thinking of Psalm 74. You know, sometimes the lament psalm, it's a gradual prayer where there's a little bit of a warm up and then he gets real.

And other times he's just like, yeah, God, why do you cast us off forever? Why does your anger smoke against the sheep of your pasture? That's how he starts.

And I mean, isn't that like our lives? There's sometimes you come to the Lord and you're struggling and there's a, "Lord, I'm coming today because I need your help." And, "Lord, my life's really hard right now. You know, it is blah, blah, blah."

And a lot of times you're just like, "God, for real."

Speaker 3

Yeah.

Speaker 4

Like there's an eruption because of not an eruption out of anger, but an eruption out of prayer of like, look, we gotta, we gotta go for this, like, right now.

And then there's other ones where the lament keeps flipping back and forth and it's, you know, he's complaining and trusting and then complaining and trusting and complaining trusting. And so you can see there's just this tension that's just very evident.

So no psalm of lament is the same because no human experience with pain is the same. And I think we just have to be really okay with that.

I say that grief is not tame. You can't tame it. And that's part of the tension of it. Lament helps, but it's not a silver bullet. It just gives you a way to process it as you're on your pilgrimage.

And there's lots of other things that you need to do besides lament.

Speaker 2

The thing that I hear you both saying, though, is that engagement with God, like, engage with him. He's there. He's with you.

And I thought it was helpful for you to even say, Christine. And you may not feel like doing that or want to or feel like after you do it, it made that big of a difference. But we do it out of necessity, out of faith.

Like, God, I need you. And he's there. He's with our kids. That's what I need to remember. He's with our kids. He loves them more than I do, and he always will.

Speaker 3

And I'm also hoping a listener or a watcher today who's been holding something in.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Speaker 3

Feels the freedom after this conversation. Hit the pause button, turn it off. Go engage with God. Voice your complaints, ask for help, and commit to trust. Oh, no, it's. Yeah, I got him. Right?

Speaker 4

You got it.

Speaker 3

Commit to trust. Evac works. But no, seriously, that would be a great practical step as a result of just this last 20 minutes of listening to this, like, okay, I'm not going to hold this in anymore. I'm going to meet God.

Speaker 1

Yeah. If Jesus could pour out his heart before the Lord in the garden of Gethsemane and the many other times he retreated to the mountains that we didn't get to eavesdrop on. Right?

But this is. This is Christ-like. It is Christ-like to lament. We see how he did it in the garden. We see him even echoing or quoting Psalm 22 on the cross. Right?

And so surely, if our Lord can speak this way, in this posture, we are to imitate him.

Speaker 3

Wwjd. What would Jesus do? What did Jesus do in voice his complaint. He did it. We can do it.

Speaker 2

Hey, thanks for watching. And if you like this episode, you better like it. Just hit that like button and we'd.

Speaker 3

Like you to subscribe. So all you got to do is go down and hit the subscribe. I can't say the word subscribe. Hit the subscribe button. I don't think I can say this.

Speaker 2

Word like and subscribe.

Speaker 3

Look at that. You say it so easy. Subscribe. There it goes.