Surviving the Silence-5: Permission to Lament 🦋🦋

🎙️ SURVIVING THE SILENCE – EPISODE 5

Sometimes the strongest people are the ones carrying the deepest pain.

They keep showing up.
 They keep smiling.
 They keep encouraging others.

But privately, they’re tired.

In Job Chapter 3, the silence finally breaks.

For the first time, Job speaks—and what comes out is grief, sorrow, questions, and lament.

This episode explores a powerful truth many believers need to hear:

💔 Lament is not weakness.
 💔 Tears are not unbelief.
 💔 Honesty is not rebellion.

God is not intimidated by your pain.

He can handle your questions.
 He can handle your tears.
 He can handle your honesty.

Sometimes healing begins the moment we stop pretending we’re okay and start bringing our brokenness to God.

🎧 Episode 5: Permission to Lament
📖 Job Chapter 3

Remember:

Faith is not pretending everything is okay.

Faith is bringing everything to God.

#SurvivingTheSilence #BookOfJob #PermissionToLament #BeautifulMeEmpowermentMinistry #HealingJourney #FaithAndHealing #TrustGod #GodIsStillWriting #JobSeason #Chapter38 #HopeInTheStorm

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Good morning, good morning, good morning, and welcome back to surviving the silence. I am your host, Monique Anderson, and this is the Beautiful Me Empowerment Ministry where healing meets hope, faith meets restoration, and broken places become testimonies of God's grace. If this is your first time joining us, welcome. This podcast was created for people like you and me navigating difficult seasons. People walking through disappointment, grief, loss, heartbreak, trauma, uncertainty, and those moments when life simply doesn't make sense. Together, we are journeying chapter by chapter through the book of Job, not simply to study suffering, but to discover God in the middle of it. In episode one, we met Job before the storm. In episode two, we stepped into a heavenly conversation that Job never heard. In episode three, we witnessed the day everything changed. In episode four, we explored what happens when the battle becomes personal and attacks your body, your mind, and your peace. Today, we arrive at one of the most emotionally raw chapters in all of the book of Job. Today, Job finally speaks. What comes out isn't praise, it's pain, it's grief, it's lament. And perhaps that's exactly what some of us need permission to do today. Let us pray. Father, thank you for being a God who is not afraid of our emotions. We want to thank you for a new day. We want to thank you for your grace and your mercies and your favor, God. It is new every morning. Thank you, oh God, for sparing our lives. Abba Father, thank you for being our provider. Thank you for being our keeper. Thank you for being our peace speaker. Thank you, oh God, for being our way maker. Thank you, oh God, for being our restorer. Thank you, God, for being our strength. Thank you, oh God, for being an ever-present help in times of trouble. Father God, we honor you even in this moment. We give you praise. Father, we adore you. You are indeed worthy of our praise. Father, we ask you that you will forgive us of our sins, forgive us of our debts as we forgive our debtors, and lead us, oh God, not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For yours is the kingdom, the power, and the glory. Father, we thank you for loving us even in our brokenness this morning. And today, God, we help, we ask you, oh God, that you will help us to understand that we can be naked before you and that honesty is not rebellion, lament is not weak, and tears are not a lack of faith. Open our hearts, God, as we study your word and meet every listener exactly where they are. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen and amen and amen. Have you ever carried something for so long that eventually the weight became too heavy? You tried to stay strong. You prayed. You smiled. You kept showing up. You kept encouraging others. You kept saying, I'm okay. Until one day you realized you weren't. And this is not because you stopped loving God, it's not because you stopped believing, it is just because you are exhausted, emotionally exhausted, mentally exhausted, spiritually exhausted. That is where we find Job. For seven days and seven nights, he sat in silence. No words, no explanations, no answers, just grief. And then finally, the silence breaks. Job three, one to three, and I won't be reading all of it, but um, you can read it in your spare time, or maybe I will. After this, Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth. And Job said, Let the day perish on which I was born. Now let's pause there for a moment. These are shocking words, painful words, they are honest words, and they are recorded in scripture. Why? Because God wants us to understand something important. Authentic faith includes authentic emotions. And if you listen to the episode last week, I believe it was episode four and possibly episode three, where I mentioned that I had gotten to that place where Job, where we find Job here in chapter three, where I was exhausted. I kept showing up, encouraging others, and then you know, everything that was happening to me, I could not hold it any longer. I just couldn't. I became so exhausted emotionally, mentally, spiritually, right? And I remember the morning as I was jogging, and I I you know, I was out there and I was jogging because it is my little special time with God, you know, where I commune with the Holy Spirit and I talk to God, and you know, I listen while I'm jogging, right? You you should try it, it's absolutely beautiful, a different atmosphere outside, just you and God, um, there, and so in the beginning, I was there, and you know, I was literally I was thanking God, and it was hard, it was hard saying thank you, God, it was hard worshiping, it was really hard because I was so exhausted, and then during the worship, the tears started falling um down my cheeks, and then as soon as the tears started falling down my cheeks, you know, all of the emotions like I felt several emotions all in one, and I was angry, and I asked God, I said, God, my brother died a couple hours after birth, he was born before me, and I probably should have shared the same faith. Why did you let me live if the cost of living was going to be this high, if the cost of living was going to be this painful? And my sister always talks about my relationship with my dad. It's been a while since she's mentioned it, but in the past, you know, I think my mom and my sister realized by now that my dad and I we have somewhat of a different relationship, and it is not that my dad loves me anymore than he loves my sister, it's just that my dad has journeyed with me through all of the pain that I have experienced in my lifetime, even from birth. My dad he held my lifeless, almost lifeless body burning with fever, and he brought me home from the um clinic or the hospital, whatever they called it that day, and he prayed. I mean, he prayed and he prayed me back to life, and up until today, he still prays some of those same prayers whenever I'm going through my go-through, where he will ask the Lord to take the pain from me and put it in him, like my dad can tell when I'm not okay, I can't fool him, none at all. Um, and so he's carried my the emotional pain, he's carried the mental pain, he's carried the physical pain, you know, and so because of that, and just because of everything that I've experienced throughout my lifetime, listen, I have diagnosis upon diagnosis upon diagnosis upon diagnosis, but I am so grateful today that I have seen God work in my life, I've encountered God as healer so many times in my life, and I am so grateful this morning. And if I were to do a gratitude check right now, uh that would be my gratitude check that I'm grateful that I have had the privilege to encounter God as healer so many times in my life, and so I was angry at God the other day, and I said, God, uh, is this the price to live? Because the price is too high, and I was so angry and asking him, you know, what have I done? I have tried my best to live a life that is pleasing and acceptable before you. I've even I said to the Holy Spirit, I said, Holy Spirit, I've asked you to help me, you know, to live that kind of life. So why is this happening to me, you know? And that was where Job was. And as I said, this was recorded. What Job was going through, what Job said, Job said, let the day perish on which I was born. And I know that that might be shocking, of course, because those are painful words, right? And we probably say we wouldn't be expecting that from Job, but the Bible, again, it was recorded in the Bible because God wants us to understand that it is important, your authentic emotions are important. Be real with God, let him know exactly how you're feeling because life hits. I was saying to a friend of mine yesterday, I was saying to her, I said, Life is so hard right now. Every single individual is experiencing something, it is it might be uh mental illness, it might be physical illness. So many persons are exhausted, right? So many persons are struggling financially, persons are struggling in their marriages, persons are struggling in just regular day-to-day uh relationships, persons are struggling even with their faith. I was listening to a podcast yesterday, and the speaker, you know, was saying that being a even being a Christian and just living a life that is pleasing and acceptable before God, it is hard, it is not easy, you know, and so persons are struggling even spiritually, because again, you know, it is a spiritual warfare, and there are so many things that are coming against us, right? But I'm reminded of the song where it says God blocked it, God blocked it because some of the time, some of the things that were coming at us that we didn't see, you know, God blocked it, and God also has been keeping us. There's another song that says God kept us or God kept me, so I wouldn't let go. And I want to encourage you today that God is keeping you, so keep holding on, but be honest with him, be honest with him. If we notice carefully what Job does not do, he does not curse God, he does not abandon his faith, he does not walk away, instead, he curses the day he was born. In ancient Hebrew poetry, this is known as a lament. A lament is a cry of sorrow directed toward God, and throughout scripture we see lament because David lamented, Jeremiah lamented, the prophets lamented, even Jesus lamented on the cross. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Yeah, lament is not the absence of faith, lament is faith expressing pain. Job's grief is so deep that he wishes he had never experienced life at all. His suffering has overwhelmed his perspective, and the remarkable thing is that God allows these words to remain in the Bible because God is teaching us that he can handle our honesty. I always say that God is a big boy, he can handle it. And just be naked before him and express how you are feeling. It doesn't mean that your faith is gone or you don't believe God anymore or you don't trust him anymore. Uh sometimes, yes, it is hard to believe, it is hard to trust, but it doesn't mean that we have gotten to the place where we don't believe and we don't trust. The other day I wrote and I said, God, honestly, right now in this space that I'm at, it is hard to believe, it is hard to trust, it is hard to hope, it is hard to have faith. But I also said to him, But I'm giving you my little, I am giving you my little, my little faith, my little belief, my little hope, my my my little trust. I am trusting you with my little that you're going to take my little and you're going to make it into something. And so it is okay to be honest with God. As a counselor, I find Job chapter three to be incredibly powerful because Job demonstrates what many trauma survivors experience: profound grief, and profound grief often creates feelings of hopelessness. There's emotional exhaustion, despair, questioning, and even the desire to escape the pain. Many people wrongly assume that strong faith prevents these emotions. However, we see where scripture teaches otherwise, Job was a righteous man, a faithful man. We see that in chapter one, where God introduced us to Job as a righteous man, a faithful man, a man who loved God deeply, yet he still experienced overwhelming sorrow. One of the greatest mistakes we make is believing that emotional pain equals spiritual failure. It doesn't. Pain is part of being human. But the question is it's not whether we feel pain, the question is what do we do with it? And I this is beautiful me, and I will always share my story. Um, and you know, like I said the other day that I I am experiencing my job season because the journey has left me emotionally exhausted. Uh I've had moments over the past couple of weeks where disappointment seemed heavier than hope. Moments when I questioned God's plan. Moments when I struggled to understand why so many battles seemed to arrive at once. And it is not that I didn't love God anymore or stopped believing, but I was hurting so bad. And maybe you understand this feeling. Maybe you've continued serving, continued praying, continued showing up, yet privately you've been crying or carrying pain that few people know about. And Job here is reminding us that God is not offended by our humanity, He already knows what we're carrying. Do not let pain become the narrator. That is one of the most dangerous things sometimes about suffering, is that sometimes pain begins telling our stories. Pain says this will never get better, you'll always feel this way. Your future is ruined, God has forgotten you, but pain is not a reliable narrator. Pain speaks from the present moment, but God speaks from eternity. Job is interpreting his future through his pain, and we do that. We mistake a chapter for the whole book. We assume today's struggle is tomorrow's destiny, yet the reader knows something Job doesn't know, and that is the story isn't over. And if you're listening today, perhaps this is what God wants to remind you: that your story isn't over either. And if we look at the gift of lament, the modern church has taught many people how to praise, but not how to lament. We've learned how to celebrate victories, but not how to process grief. We've learned how to shout but not to cry. And Job teaches us that lament, lament is somewhat sacred. Lament creates space for healing. God cannot heal what we refuse to name. And sometimes in naming it, that's where lamenting comes in. Lament keeps us connected to God while we process pain. Lament allows us to be honest without becoming hopeless. The opposite of faith is not lament. The opposite of faith is walking away. And Job never walks away. Perhaps today, what you need is permission. Permission to admit your hurting. Permission to acknowledge your disappointment. Permission to stop pretending. Perhaps today, what you need is permission to cry. Permission to grieve. Permission to bring your questions to God. May I remind you, God is not intimidated by your emotions, He is not afraid of your tears, and He is not threatened by your honesty? Bring it all to Him. And I want to leave you with some questions. I want you to ask yourself: What emotions have I been suppressing? Have I confused honesty with unbelief? What pain do I need to bring before God? And what would it look like to practice biblical lament? Job chapter three reminds us that faith is not pretending everything is okay. Faith is bringing everything to God. The tears, the questions, the disappointment, the grief, the exhaustion, all of it. Because healing begins where honesty lives. I want to thank you this morning for joining me for episode five of surviving the silence. In our next episode, we will meet Job's friend Eliphaz. We'll explore the danger of simplistic theology, why people often say the wrong things to those who are suffering, and what true support really looks like. Until next time, remember, you don't have to pretend with God, you don't have to hide your pain, you don't have to carry it alone. The chapter may be painful, but the story is not over. This is Monique Anderson from Beautiful Me Empowerment Ministry. Keep trusting, keep believing, keep healing, and remember, God is still writing your story. Father, I want to thank you for being a safe place for our hearts. Thank you for loving us in our pain and meeting us in our grief. Help us bring every emotion before you. Teach us to lament without losing hope. Heal every wounded heart listening today and remind us that even in our darkest chapters, you remain near. In Jesus' name, amen, amen, and amen. God bless you and have a productive week in the Lord. And remember, I love you, but God loves you even more. Like, share, follow, leave a comment. I appreciate you.