lament |l??ment|noun – a passionate expression of grief or sorrow

Lamentations is a well-known book in the Bible where Jerusalem, personified as a woman, mourns for her destruction and for her former inhabitants. It is a deeply emotional book and one that is not often read from the pulpit of churches today, which I find to be a disservice to our culture. We can learn many things from the Bible so why do we avoid the places of deep grieving?

You will hear many phrases at Mars Hill Graduate School and one of those is, ‘you cannot take your clients where you yourself have not gone.’  Client can be a broad term for anyone and everyone who ever shares a part of their story with you; you cannot help your client with their grief, no matter how hard you try, unless you enter into your own tragedy and begin to grieve and mourn for your own pain.  What would it look like for you to enter into the dark parts of your story and allow yourself to feel the pain?  Every change brings loss and every loss must be grieved. What changes have you yet to grieve? Where in your life have you moved on to another chapter without regard for the ending of a season?  We’ve all done it so please do not feel as though you are alone.

The first goal of therapy is to create safety for the client in order for them to enter into those hard places. MHGS has been that safe place for many people, regardless of their degree program, where they have come from, or where they are going. We have become a nation of people who mask our pain, for whatever reason, in pursuit of happiness. My hope is that by beginning the process of grieving we can being to find healing in our lives, community in knowing that we are not alone, and joy that comes with the morning.