The Gift of Honesty

It’s dangerous when we marry Christian theology with cultural lies of toxic positivity, especially during something like the devastating coronavirus pandemic. As a practicing psychotherapist, I am aware of how brave it is for my clients to share their hurts with me when they have not been given a chance to release their sorrows to friends, family, or at church. And it is telling when our churches act as a place where only happiness belongs when the experience of being human is so much richer and more complex than the prevailing culture would have us believe.

Nowhere do we see more examples of this heavy weight placed on the shoulders of the body of Christ than in the local church. People quip “Don’t complain!” and “See only the good!” while there is real and immense suffering happening in our midst. Does our trinitarian God, the Creator of our humanity who longs for communion with us, want us to reframe this outbreak as a yet another opportunity for false cheer, making tender hearts weep with shame? Could there be a more humane and compassionate response?

The psalms show us a way through, providing a more raw and surprisingly balanced perspective than the forced norm of happiness of the prevailing culture. In particular, Psalm 31 is filled with praise and pathos, but not in the order you might think. David starts his psalm touting God’s faithfulness and mercy, steadfastness and strength, but soon after the beginning lines of praise, the author shifts into very real and honest lament. David writes, “I am in trouble, / my eye is consumed with sorrow, / and also my throat and my belly. / For my life is wasted with grief, / and my years with sighing.” What a beautiful description of how our very real emotions manifest in physical sensations in our bodies! Nowhere do we hear David denying his feelings of loss, his sadness, or his legitimate fear of others. Instead, he accurately gives words to his personal experience of suffering, continuing in his lament, but asserts his trust in a faithful and present God amid calamitous circumstances.

 Lately, when I hear church folks say that all is well and they are happy, I do not feel comfortable with sharing my own feelings of fear and heartbreak. Is there a chance for me to be frank about my sadness and fear? I wonder quietly to myself and sigh, longing for more authenticity in the church. When I hear others share that this time feels like a vacation, I wonder if their avoidance of negative emotions leads to a diminished capacity for kindness and cultivates a growing sense of indifference. It’s not a strategy I’d like to employ, and I find I’m appreciative of the psalms now more than ever before.

Like David, I feel waves of grief washing over me when I think of the sick dying alone, the poor forsaken by leaders in power, children stuck at home with tired parents, workers left without jobs or housing, and families forced to stay with abusive partners while socially distancing. And like you, I long to experience the full extent of my feelings. And it’s important to know that God wants this, too. As therapist and writer KJ Ramsey writes in her memoir This Too Shall Last, “Others might not be comfortable with our most honest, desperate cries, but the psalms make it exceedingly clear God is.”

As I imagine Jesus drawing near to me during the outbreak, I take comfort in knowing he does not want me to plaster on forced felicity to appease him. He welcomes my fears and grief, my heartache and sadness, and longs for me to come close as the needy and dependent child of God that I am. Like David, I can anchor myself in the loving arms of Christ, flinging my heartache and sorrow to him, knowing ours is a God who gets us. When I breathe in deeply and focus on a sacred word, I offer my emotions the space to emerge and take shape in my body, perhaps in the form of tears or sighs of sorrow. They deserve the dignity to be seen and known for they are part of my struggle of being human; they also give me a chance to build kindness to others. As shame researcher Dr. Brene Brown said recently in a podcast, “The surest way to have compassion for others is to attend to your own feelings.”

When I find a trusted friend or mentor, pastor or therapist, and recall the real grief, suffering, and fallout from pandemic, I allow myself the chance to become vulnerable with another, thereby claiming a new territory of solidarity between us. Like David, I mourn and trust God, and like Christ, I find healing in connection with trusted others who give me the space to air my concerns from a truly honest perspective. We can affirm God’s faithfulness amidst trials together. From a neurobiological perspective, these instances are beautiful examples of shared grace and communion with God and each other. They form the very essence of a life well-lived.

For ours is a God who loves us, but he is also a God who longs for our honest words in suffering. As Ramsey writes, “Right in the middle of the Word of God, we find that radical honesty about the true state of our souls creates a beautiful remembrance that God relates to us with overflowing love.” He longs for our connection and a deep faith built not on fake optimism, but on deeply grounded truth that life is a mixed bag of scary and sacred events that is best acknowledged and shared.

When we cry out and mourn like David in the psalms, when we acknowledge that God is still with us in the chaos, we step bravely into the realm of honest reflection and relationship. When we combine it with telling another soul who holds space for our tender secrets, we build a better world in which all parts of our reality are welcomed home, rooted by a good and loving God who deeply honors all our experiences.

Jenn Zatopek is a recovering perfectionist, writer, and therapist from Texas. Her work has been featured in Ruminate Magazine’s The Waking, Fathom Magazine, SheLoves Magazine, The Glorious Table, and The Mustard Seed Conspiracy. When she’s not writing, you can find Jenn planting flowers and herbs in her garden. Jenn is a student at Brite Divinity School and writes about the intersection of psychology and spirituality at theholyabsurd.com and
@theholyabsurd.

Photograph © Habib Dadkhah, used with permission