Chaplain Michele Monroe-Clark on wasted words

A Psalm of Lament

For day and nights
Weeks and months
I’ve prayed
Words of healing
For self and others
My words of pleading
Praise and hope
Fall upon deaf ears

Death comes
Unwelcomed
Unwanted
Anytime any place

Not only physical
But spiritual too
Life stolen
Consumed by disease
Darkness surrounds
Consuming my words

Words of hope and faith
Of love and compassion
Wasted on you
My God my Source

Bitterness grows
In the darkness
Consuming what is left
Of Grace

Bitterness grows
Feeding upon my spirit
Your spirit in me

And my words
Are no longer words
Of hope or praise
My words are words
Of rage; bitter and dark
Wasted upon you
My God my Source

You do what you want
When you want
Without my voice
My words my prayer

Now, I hold my tongue
No longer uttering words to you
My wasted words
Now are tears
Upon my cheek
Spilling out
Watering my hope

You alone will catch them
As they fall
Embrace them in love
Transform them in mercy
Fill them with grace
For life renewed

This lament is the result of living through a very difficult year of painful losses, both personally and professionally. In the past eighteen months, two patients and one nurse committed suicide, a nurse and my father died from cancer, the inpatient nursing directors were reassigned, the CEO was promoted, and the Chief Nursing Officer resigned. In the midst of these events, I struggled to provide spiritual care to a patient who was hospitalized for a depressive episode and was not responding to treatment. Hopelessness began seeping in. As I sat in a room with my chaplain colleagues, we began discussing the psalms of lament, trying to find peace in the hopelessness.

In a culture that preaches a “prosperity gospel,” the psalms of lament provide another view: a view that describes God as a deity who cares but does not always respond according to our wishes; and a view that describes God as faithful and present through trials and tribulations, but not necessarily the God who fixes life so that it meets humanity’s whims and wishes. It is a view that describes a complex relationship between God and God’s people. The psalms of lament witness to the reality that salvation and redemption are possible, even when life seems hopeless and God seems to have forgotten humanity.

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