Loathsome Bitterness
“My soul loathes my life, I will give free course to my complaint, I will speak in the bitterness of my soul." (Job 10:1)
March 7
Moments of the heaviest grief will present us with profoundly powerful temptations. Our responses to these temptations will be varied, for these emotions have the power to pull us in many different directions. The power of these emotions in their rawest form are ungovernable by the dictates of rationality and cannot be bridled by our attempts of propriety. Like huge waves they billow over us crashing us on the shore of reality, though we attempt to swim against them with all our might. C. S. Lewis wrote of the loss of his beloved wife that led him through the depths of this sea of grief. He encountered a loathsome form of tears that disgusted him, “the bath of self-pity, the wallow, the loathsome sticky-sweet pleasure of indulging it—that disgusts me”.1 He called these sorts of tears, “Maudlin tears.” Bitterness within the soul can become a sick fascination to us. These melancholy melodies of self-pity do not honor the memory of our beloved departed, or the Lord. Lewis warns us, “give that mood its head and in a few minutes I shall have substituted for the real woman a mere doll to be blubbered over.” Weeping for our losses is a necessary expression of the broken heart but let us never yield to the temptation of self-pitying victimhood. The terrible allurement we find in our brokenness can easily eschew the healing hope Christ desires to give us. Survivor’s guilt may constrain us from experiencing the fullness of life that Christ wills for us to now inhabit. Expressing this anger poured out as honest grievance to the Lord is necessary for our heart to process our loss. Job, David and Christ Himself freely and unashamedly poured out their heart’s pain in prayer. Such honest bereavement surely God does not despise. We cannot fight these waves but must learn to allow them to wash over us until they recede. These waves shall in time move us to shed a more beautiful species of tears, those of praise to God for the goodness and love that was displayed in the lives of those we had known so well and cherished so deeply. Allow these sorts of tears to take place of the maudlin ones. Pour forth the offering of your tears as an outpouring of thankfulness to God for the glorious beauty revealed in the precious lives of those whom you have loved dearly.
Daily Prayer
Hearer of the deepest cries of my heart,
billows of grief have crashed my soul into the
jagged rocks of self-pity and bitterness.
Waves of ungovernable pain pour over me
that are far beyond my ability to resist.
Indulgent sorrows yield no benefit to my soul,
complaining morose is a counterfeit to true lament.
Victimhood keeps me from receiving the
healing hope of new life you have for me.
Transform my maudlin tears into those of loving
thankfulness for the precious lives which I
have been given the blessing of cherishing.
Lewis, C.S. A Grief Observed. London: Faber & Faber, 1964. pg. 7