Did someone teach you how to grieve? /// FOLLOW x UP with Chad Bruegman

Episode 008: Did someone teach you how to grieve?

In this episode of the FOLLOW x UP podcast, Steve Carter and Eric Parks are joined by Chad Bruegman, Lead Pastor of River Pointe Church in Houston, for an honest conversation about grief, lament, and the prayers most of us were never taught to pray.

Drawing from personal seasons of church hurt, disappointment, and loss, Chad reflects on how forced positivity and spiritual performance can keep us from genuine healing. Together, the three explore why lament isn’t a failure of faith but one of its most courageous expressions.

Through stories, Scripture, and practical wisdom, they discuss the importance of naming pain, bringing difficult emotions to God, and learning to trust that honesty is not something God fears.

If you’ve ever wondered what to do with grief, disappointment, or unanswered questions, this conversation offers a framework for bringing your whole self before God and discovering that honest prayer may be the beginning of healing.

Meet your hosts, Eric Parks and Steve Carter

Eric Parks

Eric is an Executive Pastor at Plum Creek Church in Castle Rock, Colorado, who cares deeply about helping people rehearse the way of Jesus in everyday life—and holds firm as a Denver Broncos fan, no matter how often Steve brings up the Bears.

Steve Carter

Steve is the Lead Pastor at Christ Church in Oak Brook, Illinois, offering a thoughtful and honest voice to the deeper work of formation and calling—and remains a devoted Chicago Bears fan, even with Eric representing Broncos country.

Explore all of Follow

We’re all following something—habits, expectations, ambition—but Jesus offers a different way. A way marked by love, presence, trust, and a life that actually leads somewhere good. Not perfectly, but increasingly, we begin to shape our lives around his.

We believe that if Jesus is right—about God, about life, about the soul—then is only makes sense to rearrange your life around what he says is true.

Follow isn’t a program to complete or a path to master, but a way of life centered on Jesus. A way of living that takes shape over time through a steady rearrangement of our lives—our priorities, our rhythms, and the things we trust most.

Links

Follow: https://www.followtheway.church/

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

I just received these messages that if the deeper your faith, the quicker you are to speak good over your situation while bypassing reality. To me, that was faith. Walter Brugman says this. He says, lamenting isn't at odds with your faith. It's actually quite possibly the highest expression of faith we've been given.

SPEAKER_01 0:23

Unspoken pain neurologically gets stored in your limbic system. So when you don't speak it, it gets stored inside of you, in many cases, comes out the way you fear it would come out.

SPEAKER_02 0:36

Good grief, it's still change. Hard lament, it's just your relationship with change. Being able to bring that to the surface vulnerably, brutally, radically, is your only way through.

SPEAKER_01 0:53

Welcome to the follow-up podcast, a podcast that believes at its core, the single most important oriented belief that if Jesus was right about God and life and the human soul, then it would make sense that we rearrange our lives around what he said is true. So that's what we're exploring. All that Jesus said was true and how to rearrange our lives around it. So um, Chad Brugman, welcome to follow-up podcast. Uh, give us give give our listeners a little background. Who are you? What are you up to?

SPEAKER_00 1:38

So, as you said, my name's Chad Brugman. Uh love these two guys who are running this podcast.

SPEAKER_01 1:44

This is a spiritual discipline, you trying to be serious. I'm just gonna say you take this where you need to go.

SPEAKER_00 1:50

Well, I just find it ironic yet beautiful that you know me, both of you guys, and you said, hey, let's talk about lament with Chad. That sounds like a good idea. Because he's knows how to be serious and really go there. So, I mean, we're gonna go there, and I've got some thoughts, but uh, I want your listeners, your amazing listeners of this podcast, to just be forewarned that I'm in no way um comfortable in the setting of podcasts like all you guys professionals are. And so if this is unconventional, I pray it's still helpful, but just uh give me some grace, people.

SPEAKER_01 2:30

Yeah, it's gonna be great. Hey, what it for real, where where are you in the world and what are you doing?

SPEAKER_00 2:34

I'm in Houston, Texas. Uh and it's getting to the season. There's about three months here where it's just the devil's armpit, is what I call it. It's just so hot and humid and sticky. Um makes for a great winter, but it's it's getting really hot right now. And I'm a I'm a pastor down here uh at an amazing church called River Point Church. And I've been here almost two years now. I'm about uh about to be two-year anniversary in a couple weeks. And I can't believe it's been two years, bro. Yeah, it's crazy. It's literally flown by.

SPEAKER_02 3:06

It's such a reflection of Houston, this church, and uh Chad stepped in, and it's just been incredible to see uh just the momentum, um, the stuff that you've brought that's been true to you. I mean, the the prayer, the worship, the vulnerability, the honesty. Um it's a really, really special place, man. You you've done a fantastic job. You have an amazing team, and uh yeah, I'm I'm just so excited. I still can't believe it's been two years. I feel like it's been longer just because of how well the attachment of you to that community has has been and the growth. It's just incredible.

SPEAKER_00 3:45

I I always say God gives us some attaboy, atta girl seasons. Um, some people call it like God wink or something, but I feel like God gave me and my family like an attaboy season. We had kind of come out of a really rough, uh really a season, speaking of of lament for several years, and we've just been in an attaboy season where everyone here has just welcomed us. They've given us trust that we haven't fully earned yet. Um, there's been such a graciousness and kindness from this people to uh just lean into the vision, the new vision that maybe I brought, and I couldn't be more grateful, man.

SPEAKER_01 4:20

Well, for our listeners, you and I go really far back. So we met in our 20s, way back in the day, uh in Rockford, Illinois, and then we did ministry for like over a decade together, and so um you being on this podcast with us is like, yeah, I was I'm I've been really looking forward to this.

SPEAKER_00 4:45

Me too. I was giddy this morning because I was like, I get to see two of my favorite people, man. And we just get to talk like old times like we would anywhere else. I love it, man.

SPEAKER_01 5:10

You know, we we're we're in a series right now where we're talking about prayer, and uh we've been walking through different forms of prayer, and I wonder if you couldn't maybe talk a little bit. You you hit on it, season of lament. Everybody has hard seasons, but I I I wonder if you wouldn't be willing to go back and talk a little bit about you know what what has you're in a really neat season right now. What preceded that for you? You know, you don't have to be specific, but like when you think about a season of lament, what did that look like for you and what did you learn? Oh my word.

SPEAKER_00 5:48

Uh that's a loaded question. Um, yeah, like you're right. Um lamenting is not if it's when. Uh, it's an inevitable part of the cycle of the kingdom of God on this side of heaven. Uh, it's an absolute grace from God that we're given permission and precedent all throughout scripture um to have conversations with God that are as intense as the lament, lamenting conversations are. Um mine were really birthed out of like everyone's just deep grief and hurt and pain and disillusionment, um, which was fast tracking me down the pathway of cynicism, which is uh one of the worst toxins the human soul can endure, is uh cynicism. And I was getting real close, and I had never been given a framework or very strong teachings in the church I grew up in about lament. Um, you know, my church, I loved it like many of our churches, though, in the you know, 80s, 90s, early 2000s, um, that word wasn't even being used in circles that I had heard. I didn't even really know, other than the book of Lamentations, I didn't really appreciate or know that lamenting was even a practice um in terms of our relationship with God. Um, and so I got introduced to it just probably, I say six, seven years ago. Um, not because I was looking for it, but because it came looking for me through a season of deep grief. And um, you know, a lot of mine centered around um church, hurt, pain, disillusionment. Some of it was self-inflicted. Um, I'm not a victim here. Uh I, you know, I'm gonna be vague about my story, but I'm not a victim here. But there was uh a lot of difficult things that uh caught me off guard. And um, I realized up to that point I'd lived a really blessed life compared to a lot of people that I've I've pastored because my deepest form of grief so far in life, by God's grace, has been, you know, church grief and friendship grief. Um, I haven't had that big loss that almost every one of my friends at much younger ages than me have had yet. And so grief was a new kind of arena for me. And man, I did not realize uh how significant of a role grief plays in people's lives and how formative it is and and and how dangerous it is to not have any tools around pain and grief. Um man, it can go sideways so quick. And so I would say to I would say when I'm talking about this with you guys today, I'm still a freshman. I am I'm still in some 101, maybe 201 classrooms. Um, and I'm grateful to be there because there's only one way to get to the next level of uh, you know, getting good with grief and lament. But that's where I'm at right now with it. And uh, like everyone else has come through deep pain.

SPEAKER_02 8:47

Yeah, they they often will say, you know, when you write a a nonfiction book, um, the best nonfiction books is writing to the person you once were. Um, that when you were in that season, you wished you would have had X. And then you write that book because you recognize of an evergreen topic that some people might be there uh someday down the road and they would have this manual or the these steps or this tool. If you could write back, what do you know today, even if you're in freshman world, that you wish you would have known maybe more clearly six, seven years ago? I'd love to hear that. And then two, I'd love to hear how do you lead and shepherd and pastor differently today because of your understanding of this prayer of lament and grief? How has that strengthened you um as a as a shepherd and pastor?

SPEAKER_00 9:55

That's a great question. Man, I I love the way you um posed it in terms of if you now wrote a book based on what you've learned since then. Um I think uh I think the title, at least today, if I had to title it, it would I'd probably title it Say It with Your Chest. Um Life Lessons in Lament. I think you know my kids are using that phrase, say it with your chest, man. If you say it, mean it. If you say it, say it with conviction. And I I think the prayer of lament is human beings looking God in the face and saying something with your chest. Um, not because it's right, not even because it's fully true, not even because it's the whole story, but because until you get it out, you can't move forward. And I had always, I had always, and I don't blame anyone for this, the church, my upbringing. It's just uh maybe some of it's my wiring, but I had always been taught in terms of faith that, you know, uh almost a sentimental approach to difficult times, you platitude your way through it, you uh speak statements of faith, right? And I had never been given permission. And so maybe chapter one of Say It With Your Chest would be um you have permission. Permission to what? To be pissed off, permission to speak with the candor to God that you were previously told or assumed was irreverent. Permission to trust that God is unfazed and unshocked by one day of your life that he already foreordained and knew and was written in his book was coming. So to say something that would speed up his heart rate or trigger him or get him argumentative back with you is just not a thing. And um, I spent a lot of time the first couple years of my pain, disillusionment, and hurt um suppressing in the name of being a good-looking, good-sounding, faith-abiding Christian. I I buried it. And, you know, when you know, when you depress stuff, the output is depression. And I did not know that a big part of my depression through that really difficult season was I had yet been given permission to get it all out. Say it with my my chest, so I did this this morning knowing we were gonna talk about lament. I I was doing scripture reading and I broke from what I was gonna normally be reading, and I read 150 sentences for my morning reading, and it was the first sentence of every psalm. And I just charted what everything that even remotely in the first sentence sounded like lament, and I love this. Uh, six times it starts, one of the psalms starts with the word why. Six times. Why? Why God? Uh how long, oh Lord, was four times. Listen to my cry was six times. Psalms 130. I wrote, I loved it. It says, Out of the depths I cry to you, Lord. Two times it started with, I pour out my complaint. Um, but the one that really struck me was that six different times it starts with why. Because you guys are probably guilty of this. You have to be, you're pastors. How many times have you looked at a uh an individual or uh people during your sermon and you said the classic um don't ask why, ask what, right? And there is some real beauty and power to that statement. And um, this isn't me saying it's not valid, it really is valid. But I think the way that's been said, and in the context we pastors typically say it, it's it's kind of a Jesus juke to spiritually bypass reality in the name of just getting to God is up to something good and he works out all things together for the good. And so get there as fast as you can, as if we have control over speeding up the good that's eventually going to come out of this, which is ludicrous once you've been through some things. And and so I would reframe that now. You have to ask why, if you genuinely ever want to get to the what in any kind of healthy way, you cannot bypass the why. Why God, I mean, in the psalmist, if it's good enough for King David, it's good enough for me. Um, he doesn't bypass that. Um, he he rarely ends there. But there are a few psalms. I read, I I noted Psalm 88 today. There's no bow tied on at the end. It's bad at the beginning, it's bad in the middle, and it ends bad. And it's on to the next psalm. And eventually it gets to bless the Lord, oh my soul, how great have you been. You know, your wonders are magnificent, but not that day. It was just why, and then just an onslaught, a diatribe of this sucks and life's hard, and I don't understand, and where are you, God? That exercise alone this morning for me just re-emphasized how significant um lament is to being in any way close to God and having depth with God. It's uh not only inescapable because of life, it's essential, is what I've learned. And that concept would have been foreign to me six, seven, eight years ago.

SPEAKER_01 15:54

Why why? Why why was it so foreign to you? You're a pastor, you have this in your hand. Why when you look at the diagnosis, why why was that so foreign?

SPEAKER_00 16:05

I I think because I I came from a uh probably like a lot of people listening, I came from a uh I would call it a hyper faith. Faith is beautiful, but a hyper faith is um again, it's high on the platitudes, high on sentimentality, it's for uh you know, forced positivity without anybody even meaning to, in the way we teach stuff, and the way we, you know, want to get to the last chapter as fast as possible. Um, you know, sprint to the hope. And hope is only as powerful. The the the embracing of hope can only be as powerful as the fuel of lament and grief. Like that that's what hope is in its power, is its juxtaposition against the worst parts of life. That's what makes hope hope. That's what makes resurrection praiseworthy and beautiful, and the centerpiece of our faith is that it was juxtaposed against hell and high water. And there's only one way to walk through hell, you just keep stepping through it, knowing that um it does have an ending date and that there is something out there. And and so um I had just spent so many years. Um, and again, nobody did this on purpose. I had just received these messages that if the deeper your faith, the quicker you are to um speak good over your situation while bypassing reality. To me, that was faith. And now it's like uh I love what Walter Walter Brugman says this. Um he says lamenting isn't at odds with your faith. It's actually quite possibly the highest expression of faith we've been given. And he was saying that in regards to you know, lamenting. It's not at odds. I I thought, you know, the lamenters were the people you wanted to ignore. They're the people that are tough to be around until you're that person and you need a bunch of people around you sharing that with you.

SPEAKER_02 18:09

Isn't it interesting? Like I think the more that I got connected to this prayer of lament, um, how much spiritual bypassing like you've you've just described so beautifully, is just uh the air that we've breathed. And trying to process it through with a spiritual director and my therapist, um I realized it's actually a fear for me of sadness and anger. Um and I and I think my I came from a uh a childhood where there was a lot of anger in my house. And I kind of I kind of just said like like the emotional um abuse, the the the things that were said, you know, it was like a vow, I'll never say that with that kind of language or vitriol um to my kids. But what I did was I I was so afraid that that was in me, that if I gave any space to that, I might become that. And and I and so what I did was I became like Mr. Brightside. I just had to bright side everything. I I had to bypass that, and if anger showed up, I got uncomfortable because oh man, this is either gonna turn to a reenactment of my childhood, or I'm not comfortable in that space because I haven't seen it done well, and and I think that piece of recognizing gosh, like so many of us are uncomfortable with actually sitting. And I think of like Lieutenant Dan and Forrest Gump climbing to the top and just like, is that all you got, God? Like, just like, but you read those Psalms and David is is so brutally honest, he'll even be honest with Lord, why are you allowing my enemies to win? Like, I wish their blood would drop from their skull. Blessed be the name of the Lord. But he has like this sense of I know I can bring it to God and he can hold it. I might not be able to hold it, but I gotta I gotta channel that somewhere, and that is the safest place for me to channel the why questions, the how questions, how long, oh Lord. Um, and I realized, oh, I I don't have that level of trust that God can hold it because I can't even hold it. I'm afraid of what it will do to me. So I have to bypass it because I don't think God can hold it, I don't think God can see it. Um, how have you been able to grow that muscle of trust? What did that look like for you? Was it journaling? Was it saying it with your chest on walks? Was it um what how did you, as you granted yourself that level of permission, begun begin to make these prayers um really tactile?

SPEAKER_00 21:08

Well, I had the uh I had the privilegeslash burden of walking through this grief with my wife for many of the same reasons and a few of our own our own personal reasons at the exact same time. But our journey while walking together looked totally different for a multitude of reasons. And um the greatest thing I probably learned from her that she just she bought into right away was um she was given permission and and took took her therapist up on it to be as pissed off and angry as she needed to be. And my wife, you guys know her, but but a lot of the listeners won't. She is the she is the antithesis of angry and loud and you know, demonstrative, and and she became all those. Things. And I was not ready for that. And at first, I was pushing back. Um, we were having tension in our marriage about how polar opposite we were in terms of how we were handling our grief. And she was getting mad at me, and I was getting self-righteous to her because I on the surface looked so much more mature. I looked so much more poised. But what I really was was um holding everything in in the name of looking the part. And she was getting everything out in the name of becoming the part she was supposed to become. And so I finally had to, through, through it not working for me, take her cue and follow her lead. And um, she was really the, the, the person that showed me that you can, and Steve, you said it, and that's why I was I was over here clapping quietly when you were talking about your story, is because I remember looking at my therapist through that season and saying, I can't be angry. I don't know how to be angry. I can't say what I want to say because I'm scared to death that I'm going to become everything I'm feeling and thinking. And I don't want that person. I don't like that person. I don't see any good ending for that person. And I could not come to the conclusion that I since have, which is the only full, safe place to get out what you have to get out and not become that person is with God. There's always going to be our best friends, our trusted confidants that can contextualize your laments and the worst parts that come out of your mouth. But only God already knows it and can really hold it without consequence, right? Which is why it's like bring it to me. Like, bring it to me. Give it to me, or you're gonna give it to everybody else.

SPEAKER_01 24:16

Unspoken pain neurologically gets stored in your limbic system. So when you don't speak it, it gets stored inside of you, and it will come out, and it actually in many cases comes out the way you fear it would come out. It's almost like it's this uh in an effort to try to shield yourself out of fear or whatever, you're actually propagating the whole system of stuff like getting stored in your limic system and it's squirting out. And this is why, like the importance of this prayer of lament, I mean, is so important because we name our pain. We have the we have the the ability to name our pain. And I know, like you and I, we've been friends for a really long time, and all of us have experienced as because we're humans and we're older, uh, we've experienced pain and loss. That that's that's the human, like, look, that's just being human. Like, we're you're gonna have loss in this life, you're gonna have trouble. That's reality. We've all experienced loss. Um, but I also walking through you, you know, I know those first few years were hard because naming it felt like I don't know, I can't speak for you, but as someone who has walked with you, it's like, well, what does that make me if I name it? Does it make me unfaithful? Does it make me bitter? But in actuality, not naming it creates something that we all fear we would become bitter and angry. And I just want to say, you know, like this when when we talk about this prayer of lament, being able to sit with God and name it, this is some of it is shouting at God, but some of it's like naming what really is bugging us. Like, God, this wasn't the way it was supposed to be. That this was and that just saying that, and I know all of our stories, we would all echo that. We would all go, that's not the way it's supposed to be. This is not the way it's supposed to be. Um, but there's something to that, man. There's something actually healing in that.

SPEAKER_00 26:35

Yeah, there is. And I um I think one of the coolest things that I I learned in, you know, again, I still think I'm a freshman uh in this lament thing. Um, but one of the things I I I came across one of the sentences, and every time one of one of the 150 sentences I read this morning struck me, I just made a little note. And uh one of the psalms starts with, Why have you rejected us? You've rejected us forever. And here's what stuck out to me um when the writer wrote that was laments are the are the prayers where you're allowed to be irrational and you're allowed you're allowed to say things that are untrue or half-truths. You don't have to regard the other person, the offender's part. You don't have to to be honest, you don't have to tell their side of the story too. And I I always thought to be genuine, I had to tell both sides of the story before God. And what I was always doing was dismissing my hurt and pain in the name of, well, what was it like to be them? And so it's this pseudo-false sense of empathy that I was bringing to my prayers. Well, I I know that, you know, somewhere between my truth and their truth, there's the truth. And so um I would do that. But what I love about the Psalms uh when it comes to the laments is that the psalmist is often being completely irrational, unapologetically, what we would call melodramatic. Um times like their saying untruths. We know God didn't reject them. We have history now to tell us that wasn't even remotely true. I don't even think he believed it. I just think he needed to say it because that's how he was feeling. And all of it gets canonized, not because it's true, not because it's reality, but because it's honest. And the only pre-qualifier for true lamentation is honesty about how you're feeling. You know, not even honesty about the real narrative. It's just I I can't see it the right way until God, you hear me say it the way I see it right now. And I wish I would have known that from the beginning, man. Uh, for people that are are going through it. You you you reserve the right to say things that other people, if you were saying it to them about God, might roll their eyes and go, bro, you're so off. And God's like, you think I've reject you forever? Just say it. Just get it out. Eventually, you'll see, you'll see my goodness uh through this, but right now, if you need to feel that way, feel that way. And I'll still be here tomorrow if you feel that way.

SPEAKER_01 29:26

Steve, um you've written about some of this process of lament in your book Uh Grieve, Breathe, Receive, right? You you sort of reflect back on your journey and what that looked like. I wonder when you hear that and you think back on a lot of the work that you've done, uh, what have you learned about uh lament and and how did you write about it?

SPEAKER_02 29:55

Yeah, I would I would say very similar to Chad. Uh this was not uh the muscles that we uh we were taught to to work out, like we had skipped leg day. Um and and so I think grief and lament, the simplest definition for me is is learning to honor what comes up when change shows up. I mean, um good grief, it's still change. Um good lament, hard lament, difficult grief, it's it's just your relationship with change. And I think um being able to bring that to the surface, and as Chad said, just to be able to be um vulnerably, brutally, radically cander, honest, um, is your only way through. And so um I think the the the piece that grief um if you don't if you don't uh honor it, it will hold your life in check. And and I think that's the that's the piece is um you will become as even Chad started that um the cynicism, the the the those toxins have to go somewhere, as you were describing, you will become that self-fulfilling prophecy that you don't want to be. I think what's just so tricky is uh um most people just don't know how to do it. And and and really what they what they're fearful of, and I was fearful of, uh I've never done this. So uh is it gonna leave me uh at a place of depression and not wanting to leave my bed for four weeks, and yet I still have to have a job and provide and be present. I think there's so much I can manage and I can control. I can manage how this person sees me, I can control this piece. I don't know if I can control once I give grief or lament an inch. And because I I don't know, I feel like I will be in a place of bury me. It's gonna bury me. I I'm gonna I I'm like literally opening myself up to it. And I think that's where like the practice for me of just this um remembering and talking about this with uh a spiritual director was when we were kids and you know, skateboarding, we skin our knee, and we go inside crying, and our mom brings out that old nasty brown bottle of hydrogen peroxide, and they're like, This isn't gonna hurt, and they pour it on you, and your knee gets all white and pussy, and you're like, Oh my gosh, am I gonna have to am I gonna lose my leg? Like, what's happening? And they clean it out and they put a band-aid on it. And every day, then you just take a few moments to open up that old band-aid, clean it out again, put a new band-aid on. And I started to start to think, what if I could just spend 10 minutes with my grief? I was just gonna start to practice with it and just clean it out, bring it before God. Um, what were those keywords? A keyword like rejection, like you read in that first. I I didn't know how to deal with rejection. Um, I think most men don't know how to deal with rejection. Um, and that's it, that is a suppressed lament. But if we don't know how to actually deal with that, we're gonna be afraid to put ourselves out there because we're afraid that rejection might come. But to be able to sit with that, bring that before God, trust Him with it, and then say, God, that's good for today. I'll come back to it tomorrow.

SPEAKER_01 33:30

Do it again. Hey, that's really key though, because I think sometimes we misunderstand the practice of lament. We we misunderstand it from a couple of levels because there's some of us people who are listening, people you know, we're pastors. There's some people who see lament as complaint, and it is it is complaint. There is a level of complaint, but there's something in the process of lament that leads to a release and a trust that it isn't just complaint, it isn't lament, isn't just like you for sure. We taught that we've been teaching this process in the prayer. Like, look, you address it, you this is real, this is what happened, and I like what you said, Chad. Um, you don't need to speak on someone else's behalf, just yours. And it doesn't, it doesn't make you, you know. I like I think learning that I don't have to be balanced in this, I just need to speak what was hurtful to me, and it does form a complaint. And those two first parts, those are really key, right? So we're gonna address it, and it's the complaint. But actually, I actually think there's a part three and a part four, and and and those two parts are equally as important, and that's where we make a request, like where we go, I here's how I'd like you to show up in this. Like I would. Um, I I think it's not the prayer lament isn't just complaints, like, God, this is how I'd like to show up. And then the last piece, and you said it, it's a release, at least for this day, a bit of trust, where we go, okay, I brought it to you, and I'm gonna trust you in this, and then um it's enough for today. It's enough for today. And then tomorrow I wake up and it probably still hurts. And I think there's a misunderstanding that, oh, well, if I lament one time, then it's done, and I shouldn't be hurting anymore, and I'm hurting. And the reality is it's like a wound being healed. We go through this process of, hey, I'm gonna address it, I'm gonna complain, I'm I'm gonna ask God that you would intervene in this way, but then I'm gonna release it to you, and and I'm gonna do this every single day. I I'm just gonna follow through this process, this framework. But I do think the release back to God in it is really, really important.

SPEAKER_02 35:57

Okay, I tell you, I uh the fact that you just said the word release. Oh, one of the the most healing, and again, as a 90s kid, um, I'm big Pearl Jam fan, but there is this song. Uh Eddie Vetter just goes for it. And the the lyrics are oh dear dad, can you see me now? I am myself like you somehow. I'll ride the wave where it takes me, I'll hold the pain, release me. And then it's like, oh dear dad, can you see me now? I am myself like you somehow. I'll wake up in the dark for you to speak to me. I'll open up. And then he just screams, release me, release me. And I just remember driving down the 90 and I'm just like crying, release me. Like just wanting it because when it's inside you and you don't want it anymore, like I but I can't seem to like, I can't seem to get that, that whatever it is, the can't, whatever I whatever visual metaphor, I can't seem to, and it just keeps appearing. You get on Twitter and you see something that someone's posted, and you're like, release me. Like I don't, um, but those that like four steps that you talked about, uh, but when you get to that piece, it's like I just remember so vividly longing for that.

SPEAKER_01 37:26

Okay, neurologically, yes. What you're doing is uh effect naming and effect naming. This is what we were talking about, why um it's so important to name it and not have to be balanced. Effect naming actually calms the amygdala, which is the part of your brain, the fear center of your brain that is spiraling in these moments where you're like, What do I do with all this pain? If you think about uh any any journey you've been on and how we think about, but effect labeling actually calms the amygdala. So, like we're wired, we are wired this way. Psalm 22 like is pretty dark all the way through, right? And so, like being able to go through the process actually lowers the fear, which then if you think about the process to then uh trust God within and ask him to release, we're actually in a better place to receive some to trust, right? So, like it's neurologically how we're wired.

SPEAKER_02 38:34

Chad, I'm curious because uh on this, our brain is to Eric's point, we're looking for some kind of meaning making in it. The typical way that most I think humans and Christians work is it's harder for us to name what's happening within. We're looking for the scapegoat. Yeah, right. So I will, I will, I will look at somebody else. We're looking at somebody else, but then all of a sudden, once we start to look at somebody else, then it's like that only can go so long. And then I think the psalmist is like no, it's you, God. You're the one who's rejected, you're the one, and I think that scares people unless they have a theology that makes sense um to actually and so like I I think of our producer Luke who always asks like the harder, like more human questions. I think about if if God is sovereign, and the question is like, what why are you making me go through why did you why why do I have to go through this? And so you can see why people would wouldn't push back to God. How do you how did you theologically um actually begin in this process to go, man? I'm I'm gonna lament, and I can trust God with this, and I'm gonna trust the process in this. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_00 40:10

Yeah. Unfortunately for me, uh it was I ran out of all other options. I tried everything but that, and it was all, I think, with good reverent intention, which was I just always assumed a genuine lament to me was sacrilegious and disrespectful to God. And um I I finally had no other option, no all alternative, nothing else was working. Um there was no form of therapy or other kinds of prayer or spiritual practices that were getting it in any way to the root of the pain. And in some ways it was increasing. And then, you know, if you're not talking to God about it, you're gonna talk to everyone else about it to stay sane. Yeah. And that's when you add collateral damage to the season because you gave you gave an intensity and you gave a truth to people that were never meant to steward at first, at least. That's God's job because you can come unbridled and unhindered with him. And uh he will always have the perfect opinion of the person you might even be bringing to him, the thing you might be lamenting, whether it's politics, whether it's a person that hurt you, whether it's a church or a religious system that hurt you. Um, you know, you don't have to waste time worrying about the other side of the story, like I said earlier. You just get to bring it, bring a sledgehammer. Um lament is the uh it's if prayers were like rooms, lament would be the room that you go pay. My wife's done this before. You go pay to get a sledgehammer and a helmet, and there's plates in there, and you break them and you smash mirrors and you, you know, break windows out of cars. I don't know if you guys have ever done that, those like rooms. To me, that's what lament is, is it's a controlled environment, control being God with God, not others, where you put on the helmet and God gives you a sledgehammer. It's his permission to do it, and you just go knocking everything with force that you feel is a threat or frustration. And there is a literal um spiritual decompression of the soul. Paul calls it a piece that passes understanding. Um, you know, neurologists, you know, have their terms for it, and they're not one or the other. It is the God of neurology and the god of our spirits all coming together to re-regulate spirit, body, and mind. And lament once you know it is a God-ordained sledgehammer, He has put in your hand and said, in this space, you get to go ham on your pain. You get to go ham on these walls, you get to swing as hard as you can at anything in sight, so that when you go into other spaces of life, the sledgehammer doesn't come out in all the wrong places with all the wrong people. And it is an absolute grace from God to have permission to come before him and say something as crazy as why have you rejected us? Why have you rejected us forever? And God's like, keep swinging.

SPEAKER_01 43:41

Um 1 Peter, where it says cast all your anxieties, right? That's the Greek cast is to hurl. So it's forceful, it's forceful language. It's it's what you're describing. It's like, no, no, no, no, no. Like, bring it, bring it, bring it.

SPEAKER_02 43:57

What's interesting too is in context, that passage. Is in the in the in-between. Like here's here's a here's a whole bunch of people who are scattered and dispersed, and the few verses before that is uh you know God opposes the proud but shows grace to the humble or shows favor to the humble and that he will lift you up in due time, and then it's like cast all your cares, and then after that it's like, hey, also beware that the devil is roaming around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. So it's like if you don't do this waiting well, the enemy to your point, Chad, is like, I got you. And if we don't hurl that to the right person, then you know what? It's almost like a sense of being proud. I can't bring this to God, I can hold it my own. You know, I'm gonna reject you actually handing me that sledgehammer to actually hurl it towards you. I can do it on my own. And in that, um it's like we've been, we just stepped right into the bear trap, you know, and not even knowing it. And so I think it's such a great verse that you called out. Chad, when did you feel that moment? Because I I I think the you just vividly said that, and Eric pushing that verse that you said he handed you a sledgehammer and he gave you permission. Like you tried everything else. Was there like a moment that you rem remembered like Chad, it's okay. I give you permission to just crush and hit. I can I this room's okay, I can take it.

SPEAKER_00 45:48

I'm sure, I'm sure there were a lot of little moments, but the the catalytic moment where I went from what felt like zero to a hundred, like full suppression to full sledgehammer mode in a in a day, was on the back end of a fight with my wife. Um, and it was a it was a fight about therapy and the different approaches. We had heard the same therapist that we saw separately, we had heard his same words, totally different. And my wife called, she called me on it in the sense of like, you are you're full of crap. Pardon my French, but she's like, You're full of crap. You you don't mean to because she says, I know your heart, but you're coming across really self-righteous in this whole you're you're almost defending people that have been sources of pain more than you're defending your own pain. And I can't stand it anymore. It's it's and it's all in the name of looking the part more than becoming the part. And she said it in a much more heated and probably eloquent way. But what she was saying was, you're full of crap, man. And you think you you think you're better than other people in pain because you're wrapping it around in platitudes and and and forced positivity. And you need to be pissed off. And uh she got me all mad, and then I tried to argue back about my approach and why my approach was better and more noble. And I even got martyristic as a pastor. Well, I don't have the right to do it the way you do it. I can't talk as free as you talk because there'll be people that might catch it and disrespect me or think less of me. And then finally, I was so grumpy the next morning. I went into a prayer time and I literally was pacing the auditorium at my church. I like to walk when I pray because I don't have a great attention span, as you guys know. And I just started losing it before God as if it was my wife. I saw the face of my wife on the face of God that morning, and I was having the best argument I because I lost the one the night before. My wife was right, she got me, and I re-upped on that argument and I was talking like I wanted to talk to my wife, to God. And I just by the end, there was like tears. Like if anyone would have walked in that auditorium, it would have been a real weird moment for them seeing me. Um, there was tears, there was yelling. I was giving names to things that I had been scared to give names to. I said things about people that I felt I didn't have the right to say things about them when I put their name in my mouth to God. Um, I said things to God about how I felt about him, but was scared to death to tell him as if he didn't already know. And it was just, it just ended in f a lot of fatigue and a lot of tears, and I felt 50 pounds lighter.

SPEAKER_02 48:53

Wow. Isn't it interesting? Like just that moment, you were closer to that 50 pound lighter lighter feeling, and everything you had been working to protect, and then all of a sudden, it's just that the floodgates open, and it's so easily. And I think that's the again that that piece of how to access that threshold, you know, and you see throughout the scriptures, there's these like almost God gives us props, like the the Hebrew prophets would dress in sackcloth, like something that was the most uncomfortable clothing to wear, to almost like put them in a posture of uncomfortability, like on their skin to try to almost open up the neurological pathways. Uh the the sackcloth, the the the laying prostate straight like on the ground, like the weeping and gnashing of teeth, like they gave themselves permission, and and we just have almost, I feel like, in my opinion, and a lot of churches that I have been a part of gave our people permission on Good Friday to get just so close to it. And then every other Sunday was up and to the right.

SPEAKER_01 50:20

Yeah, that's it.

SPEAKER_02 50:21

And and and we had trained our people maybe one day a year, maybe, just maybe, but not too much, but just like maybe. Um, and even like at the funeral, we're gonna celebrate the life. Like everything we gotta like put like a a a bow on. Um, and again, it's it's not bad for a celebration of life. I'm not, I'm not trying to, but it's in the sense of it's it's again what you're getting to is the permission to be honest and human about the why with a God who is with us and for us, even in this. Um, but man, it is so easy to bright side and bypass. And I think unfortunately, we we've trained a lot of people. Whether we don't have to confess, we've only confessed once. Um, and that's that's what you know Catholics do, but we don't have to confess, we only confess once. Lament, we don't have to lament, like we don't want to do that. That's that's like just for Good Friday or Ash Wednesday. But like when you start to make this a an uh a part of your regular practice in prayer, the connection and trust um uh with God, but more than that, the empath that you become and the shepherd you become to people is undeniable. The weightiness of your words when you teach it's like you've been there. You're not just talking about something you read, some transfer of information, like you are speaking from a profoundly transformed place. One of the best parts of what I love coming to RPC chat is when I get to see uh your wife and your kids. Same thing's true of Eric, your family, uh Chrissy, your your your kids. Like how you two have gone through this and you see how um your kids have been able to stretch their wings, and um it hasn't shaken them. It's actually they're asking big questions, they're they're trusting God in different ways, and we probably did at 16, 17, 18, 19, 20. But just the freedom and permission that you've given, um, the way that you and your wife, the way you and your wife, the way that because we married truth tellers, all three of us, or all two of us, or all of us, um, and and what a gift that's been. But I just think like to see that um and that oh this this grief didn't take us and the lament didn't take us out. We're actually built of stronger stuff, and our family is built of stronger stuff, and what that's gonna mean for generations to come, I think it's just uh a testament to the work um Chad that you've done, Eric that you've done, that uh my family and I are trying to do. But I just a lot of a lot of respect to you and and how you've navigated this. Tons of respect, bro.

SPEAKER_01 53:59

Really trying to help. I like Carter says, you put your feet on the bottom of the pool. That's what that's what the goal. Like we're we're just trying to make it real. Touch the bottom of the pool. Touch the bottom of the pool. Um, you said this though, and I want to highlight it as we as we wrap up, is you said I wanted to go from looking the part to becoming the part, and those that core desire is huge, and it's so important. Um Dallas said it this way, and we again we talk about this often that the aim of spiritual formation is not behavior modification. That is not the aim, it isn't to look the part, that's not the point, it's the transformation of all those aspects of us where behavior comes from. The heart. That's why he called it the circumcision of the heart, and lament is part of that process, right? So that it is it is becoming the part, and you cannot become the part if you don't know how to do this practice well.

SPEAKER_00 55:02

That's it.

SPEAKER_01 55:02

I love you, dude. I have watched you, I'm proud of you. Um, and uh I'm just I just I'm I'm excited to see what God does in this next season in your life, my man.

SPEAKER_00 55:17

Yeah, that's I think that's for all of us. We're I think the reason we're so passionate about this talk today was because we're all we're all on kind of uh the other side of some of it and starting to take notes on um what we've learned so far uh with a little bit of rearview mirror uh that we get to look at now. And um I one thing I know about you guys, I'm speaking for you, and I'm definitely speaking for me, is uh one of the many things that's so beautiful about finally learning what lamented is and embracing and leaning into it and becoming a practitioner is you're just a better pastor. You're just a better human. You don't have to be a pastor, but that's our world. Um talk about a hard classroom to graduate to become a better pastor, but I wouldn't trade it for the world. There is a lens with which I listen to every conversation I have with people, um, the way I pray with people, um, the way I hurt with people. Um I am the biggest, loudest evangelist for telling people to say it to God with their chest now. I went from being the most scared to do it to telling everybody. It's like the addict that finally gets free. They instantly tell the word they become the best evangelist for why sobriety is the best thing on planet Earth, right? I'm in that kind of phase where I can't shut up about it. Um, because I I, you know, man, I learned it two minutes ago, I feel like. And once you get it, you get it. And I want everyone to know. And so for everyone that listens to this and you guys, man, God's handing you a sledgehammer and he's co-signing on uh whatever in this controlled room of lament that he's created, swing away and hit everything in sight until you feel an easy yoke and a light burden, and then it's time to drop the sledgehammer and maybe go into a different room of prayer for a little bit and recover.

SPEAKER_02 57:26

I love that. So good, man. So good. I I do think you should write say it with your chest. That was a that was a word for me. Um, because yeah, I have such a a manager part um that again, um that's a that was a good challenge, and I hope everyone listening um can find that space to to pick up that sledgehammer and say it with your chest.

SPEAKER_01 57:52

Brother, nothing but love, nothing but love. So that's gonna do it for today. If something landed for you in this conversation, don't just let it sit. Take it with you. Carry it into your week. Talk about it with somebody, let it do something in you. And if you want to go deeper, click on the link in the show notes. We'll be back soon with more. So until then, keep following up.