Christoph's Lament

I was only 20 when my Mum died. I was in the middle of University away from home, and felt helpless. For months, years, I had been praying for her to get better, but one night in desperation I prayed for God’s will to be done and not mine, and that was the night she died. I felt a huge sense of guilt and anger, anger that I was responsible for her death. It wasn’t until I discovered the power of laments that I was able to come to terms with that anger.

To help you to understand how laments are structured and to see how someone has used the lamenting psalm template, I wanted to share my lament with you. It rhymes (which they really don’t need to), and it’s not very good, but it is very real to me, and that’s all a lament should be.

O Lord, constant companion,

Who through the hearts and hands of others

has tended and cared for me,

why did you allow me to believe

that I had cast my mother free?

All those nights I prayed

that she would be healed and come back soon,

but that one night I prayed for her peace

is the night she slipped away to you.

That guilt I carried I cannot explain,

the belief I was to blame!

My prayer had killed my mother,

I was burdened with that shame.

But in that pain I felt you near

and I understood what matters,

that prayers are not so simple

and neither are their answers.

I made you too small,

I diminished your true glory,

and in that I nearly missed

the final chapter of her story.

Your love saved her from her suffering,

as her love saved me from mine.

And now I truly see

what it means to be divine.

Thank you Lord for the maturing of my heart,

now I am thankful for our time together

not the time we are apart.

I have a richer understanding

of what it meant to lose my Mum.

It was not my childish desires

but your greater will be done

Christoph Auckland is the Senior Outreach Officer for the Diocese of Llandaff