Learning to Lament

I think about my friend Sarah Jobe, a young woman with two beautiful little girls who found the necessary courage to speak aloud about the inherent challenge and difficulty that can come in the midst of spaces in which women are culturally conditioned to bask and delight. This year Sarah published, Creating with God: The Holy Confusing Blessedness of Pregnancy.

Of course we will not all write books; this just happens to be how these particular women felt called to give flesh to their experiences. The point is that when we name our sorrows aloud we are suggesting to one another what we consider communally important about the experiences of women. It is an act of solidarity and an attempt to reframe what the larger public and private narratives consider appropriate public discourse. And it is a faithful way of bringing all our selves before the God who heard the sorrows of biblical women like Hannah, Hagar, and Elizabeth.