I decided to start reading the book of Lamentations a few mornings ago. I began reading the first verse of the first chapter and after speaking those words aloud, I quickly slammed my Bible shut, looked at Taylor and muttered a slow and drawn-out, “woah…” under my breath.

“How she sits alone,
the city once crowded with people!” (Lamentations 1:1)

It’s funny, I’m usually the first person to caution people against reading the Bible this way. No, I don’t think Lamentations 1:1 is talking specifically about our current quarantined situation (obviously), but I do think God is constantly communicating things to us and this first line felt so close to home that I couldn’t help but continue to listen to what I think God has already been telling me.

I started writing this blog post when this all first began. The first few lines that I wrote down read:

“Here’s my COVID-19 post. It’s not encouraging.

I’ve been struggling.”

The past couple of weeks were (still are)…hard. I don’t tend to be an emotional person (passionate, yes), but I found myself feeling a whole lot of emotions I hadn’t felt in a long time and all at the same time: worry, fear, exhaustion, anxiousness, discomfort, current grief, anticipatory grief, loss, and overall sadness. A lot of sadness.

I just moved to a new neighborhood in east Los Angeles, a neighborhood that I was excited to explore with all its mom-and-pop shops, and local coffee and food nooks. The first night we moved in, before any social distancing measures were put in place, Taylor and I walked to a local restaurant where I enjoyed the best cauliflower dish I’d had in a while. The next morning, I called my mom excitedly and told her I wanted to take her there for dinner when she came to visit for my graduation—assuming nothing would drastically change and all would be as usual come June.

Less than a week later, in one of my afternoon walks, I passed by this same restaurant and noticed a sign on their door: “Thank you for 12 great years, Echo Park. We love you.”

My heart sank as the reality of this hit hard for the first time.

Every hour after that was met with news alert after news alert on my phone with updated death tolls, unemployment numbers, grim projections for the future. More personally, I received emails about events I had scheduled. One by one they were being cancelled: shows, conferences, in-person classes, church, small group, work events, a vacation Taylor and I had planned. And then there’s still the uncertainty of things (which I think at this point are certain, but I refuse to accept it until it’s “official”): a class at Emory I was scheduled to take, a writer’s retreat…my graduation.

All of these things compounded together began to feel like a heavy weight slowly pulling me under. Everything happened so fast and all at once. I felt like I was beginning to drown, mostly with sadness.

I felt, and still feel, sad for those who are dying and for those who are sick. Sad for those who feel symptoms, but don’t have access to testing or health insurance. I feel sad for those of us who struggle with anxiety and those at home with depression. I feel sad for the elderly, already marginalized and lonely, who are now asked to further isolate themselves from the public. Similarly, I’m sad for the disabled among us who are often ignored, they’ve been living this reality for so long and have to now listen to the rest of us process it for the first time. I feel sad for Asian people across the country who are suffering from racist insults fueled by those in power. I’m sad for those stuck in domestic violence and child abuse situations, as this time at home might be absolute hell. I’m sad for high school seniors who won’t get to attend prom or their senior trip. I’m sad for those losing their jobs, or having their hours or salaries reduced. I’m sad for friends whose family members have tested positive and are now living in crippling fear. I’m sad for the local shops that have been forced to shut down after 12 years of serving the community.

The first two weeks of this sadness was so overwhelming I could barely get off the couch. Well-meaning friends encouraged me to practice gratitude, go out for a walk, download workout videos, try cooking something new; but besides not having the energy to do so, something in me questioned whether I should push past the sadness…wasn’t it warranted? Why should I force myself to “feel better” when things look so grim…for the entire world? What if this is a time in which I should grieve? And not for a moment…and then go back to “normal life”—or any attempt at trying to make life feel “normal” again.

The only thing that made sense for me in that moment was to let things not make sense, to sit in the funk, not rush through the sadness. I wanted to feel it, because everything that’s happening is worth sitting in the sadness.

I write this to you today not as a glimmer of hope, or a call to find a silver lining, at least not right now. Instead, I join the chorus of people who are urging us to learn to lament. And lament well. As N.T. Wright said last week in a Time article, “Lament is what happens when people ask, “Why?” and don’t get an answer. It’s where we get to when we move beyond our self-centered worry about our sins and failings and look more broadly at the suffering of the world.”

For the most part, dominant culture is not particularly attuned to the suffering in the world—and not just the world, but also those who are less privileged in our midst. Privilege gives folks the ability to rush quickly to hope, to avoid sitting in the pain. As Walter Bruggemann says, the “haves” develop of a theology of celebration; the “have-nots” develop a theology of suffering and survival, “their notion of themselves is that of a dependent people crying out for a vision of survival and salvation.”

In his book Prophetic Lament, Soong-Chan Rah explains that the Western, American Church doesn’t know how to lament well because of its deeply rooted sense of triumphalism and exceptionalism. The privilege of those in the dominant culture is furthered by the belief that we, as a society, are an exceptional people favored by God. This goes all the way back to the Puritan and Protestant ministers and magistrates who arrived in this country and convinced their flocks of their blessed status as a redeemed people in sacred covenant with God and with the land. It’s part of how they were able to justify genocide, claiming New England as the new Jerusalem.

For centuries the American church has sung songs of victory and triumph while ignoring the cries of the marginalized. But when we do so, we fail to live in truth. We gloss over the brokenness of this world and the ways we have perpetuated that brokenness. As Rah says, “we cover up our wounds.”

But what if we decide to stop covering up our wounds? What if we awaken from our numbness and choose to feel it, all of it? What if we acknowledge the brokenness around us, in our world—and the ways we have a played a part in it?

What if we learn to lament from those who know lament intimately? What if we do this not only for ourselves, but to better love and serve our neighbor?

What if we allow ourselves to be tender and broken, to name our losses and resist the urge to jump to quick, shallow fixes? What if we not only learn to listen to the voices who have been crying out from the margins in dependence on God, but join them in their hope of seeing a more just society?

Imagine how our world could transform now and after all of this is over.

After all, we can’t envision a new future if we don’t see and feel the suffering in our current reality.

And so during this time, I’m resisting the “well, at least…” refrain of the privileged and choosing to sit with the words of those who grieve in Scripture, including Jesus who asked God why he’d been forsaken. I’m allowing myself to remain tender and broken for a chance that the Divine might meet me here, in the muck.

I said this post wasn’t intended to be a glimmer of hope, a call to find a silver lining, but I can’t help but think that perhaps that is the silver lining—the opportunity to give ourselves the freedom to lament, to sit in the funk, to weep like Jesus wept, and not rush past Good Friday—in the hopes that we would be more like and closer to Jesus come Easter Sunday.