The Power of the Lament
It is 1.00am on a Saturday here in Australia.
The house is quiet.
The world feels slower at this hour.
There is something about the middle of the night that strips life back to what it really is. Noise fades. Performance fades. Distractions lose some of their power. You are left with yourself, your thoughts, your memories, your fears, and whatever truth you are willing to face when nobody else is watching.
Tonight I find myself looking back over the previous week.
And if I am honest, it was not a polished week.
It was not a victorious week in the way people often like to frame things.
It was not a week of easy momentum, clean emotions, or tidy breakthroughs.
It was a week of battle.
Internal battle.
The kind that does not always show on the outside.
The kind where you can still function, still speak, still show up, still answer messages, still go through motions, while something heavier is happening underneath the surface.
This week I battled overwhelm.
I battled that suffocating feeling of too much at once.
Too many thoughts.
Too many pressures.
Too many unfinished things.
Too many emotional currents pulling in different directions.
I battled not feeling good enough.
That old voice.
That familiar accusation.
That inner narrative that can look at progress and still whisper failure.
what started off at the start of the week as some negative thoughts would lead my thoughts and emotions into complete unhinged chaos for the entire week
That can look at effort and still call it lacking.
That can look at a man trying and tell him he is still behind.
many nights this week i sat in the dark night of the soul
I battled self doubt.
The questioning of everything.
The doubting of decisions.
The doubting of calling.
The doubting of ability.
The doubting of whether the things I am building matter at all.
I battled self sabotage.
That strange human tendency to wound yourself while claiming you want healing.
To shrink when you should move.
To delay what matters.
To reach for what numbs instead of what restores.
To speak against yourself in ways you would never speak to another person.
And if I am going to be raw and real tonight, I also battled suicidal ideations.
I started to listen as death leaned in
not loud but constant and almost reassuring
I do not write that dramatically.
I do not write it for effect.
I write it because truth matters.
There are moments when the mind can become dark territory.
Moments when exhaustion, pain, pressure, trauma, disappointment, and accumulated weight can distort perspective so deeply that escape begins to masquerade as relief.
That is real.
Many people know that reality privately.
Many smile publicly while carrying thoughts they are ashamed to admit.
Many function externally while wrestling internally with whether life is worth carrying.
That is why honesty matters.
Because hidden darkness grows teeth.
Light weakens it.
And yet, in the middle of all of that, something else was present.
That word matters more than many realise.
Modern culture does not know what to do with lament.
It knows how to market happiness.
It knows how to perform strength.
It knows how to posture confidence.
It knows how to scroll past pain.
It knows how to medicate discomfort.
It knows how to distract itself to death.
But lament is different.
Lament is not polished positivity.
Lament is not denial.
Lament is not pretending everything is fine.
Lament is the language of pain brought honestly before God.
It is grief that still turns upward.
It is sorrow that still speaks.
It is confusion that refuses silence.
It is anguish that has not abandoned prayer.
That is powerful.
Because there is a world of difference between suffering without direction and suffering brought into the presence of God.
One collapses inward.
The other cries upward.
This week, I lamented.
Not elegantly.
Not in beautiful religious language.
Not in soft poetic whispers with violin music in the background.
I lamented like a tired man trying to breathe.
I lamented with frustration.
I lamented with tears.
I lamented with anger.
I lamented with questions.
I lamented with that deep internal groan that does not always know how to become words.
There were moments where all I could say was some version of:
Lord, help me.
Lord, I am drowning.
Lord, I do not understand myself right now.
Lord, I am tired of carrying this.
Lord, if You do not meet me here, I do not know what to do.
That is lament.
And contrary to what some believe, lament is not weak faith.
Lament is wounded faith that still refuses to let go.
That distinction matters.
Weak faith says there is no point speaking.
Living faith says I do not understand, but I am still speaking to You.
The Psalms are full of this language.
The prophets cried out.
Even Christ Himself entered the language of lament.
“My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?”
Those are not decorative words.
Those are blood words.
Those are agony words.
Those are words spoken from the cross.
And that brings me to the deepest truth of this week.
In the midst of my lament, Christ crucified was all I could hang onto.
Not my own strength.
Not my mood.
Not my consistency.
Not my emotional stability.
Not my ability to reason myself into peace.
Christ crucified.
That phrase can become familiar too easily.
But if we slow down, it is everything.
The Son of God mocked.
Beaten.
Rejected.
Nailed to wood.
Bearing sin.
Bearing wrath.
Bearing shame.
Bearing what I could never carry.
Christ crucified means God has entered suffering, not observed it from a distance.
Christ crucified means pain is not foreign to Him.
Christ crucified means my darkest thoughts do not scandalise Him.
Christ crucified means when I feel crushed, I look to the One who was crushed for my iniquities.
Christ crucified means when I feel abandoned, I look to the One who entered abandonment.
Christ crucified means when guilt accuses me, I look to the blood that speaks a better word.
Christ crucified means when the week has emptied me out, I look to the One who poured Himself out unto death and rose again.
That is not cliché to me.
That is oxygen.
There were moments this week where I did not feel spiritually impressive.
I felt depleted
I felt mentally loud.
I felt emotionally unstable.
I felt tired of fighting certain battles.
I felt disappointed in myself.
I felt the old ache of wounds that still know how to speak.
I was unhinged and trying to come up for air
And in those moments, the gospel did not appear to me as a shiny slogan.
It appeared as a rugged cross.
As rough wood.
As blood.
As mercy bought at unbearable cost.
That steadied me.
Not instantly.
Not magically.
But truly.
There is a false idea many carry that if Christ helps you, then pain disappears quickly.
That has not been my experience.
Sometimes Christ helps by removing burdens.
Sometimes Christ helps by carrying you under them.
Sometimes Christ calms storms.
Sometimes Christ anchors you inside them.
This week felt more like the second kind.
The storm still moved.
The mind still battled.
The emotions still surged.
But I was not abandoned inside it.
That matters more than comfort.
I think one of the cruelest lies people believe is that if they are struggling deeply, they must be failing spiritually.
I reject that.
Some struggles are evidence not of failure, but of war.
A dead man does not wrestle temptation.
A numb soul does not lament.
A surrendered life often becomes the very place where hidden pain is exposed and dealt with.
Sometimes the reason things feel loud is because healing has disturbed what was buried.
That does not make the process easy.
It does make it meaningful.
There were moments this week I hated how I felt.
Moments I wanted out of my own head.
Moments I wanted immediate relief.
Moments I was tired of being me.
That is brutal to admit, but true.
And yet even there, something in me still turned toward Christ.
Sometimes weakly.
Sometimes angrily.
Sometimes barely.
But I turned.
And perhaps that is the hidden miracle of grace.
Not always dramatic deliverance.
Sometimes simply this:
You still turn toward Him.
You still pray.
You still cry out.
You still open the Word.
You still resist the final lie.
You still endure one more night.
You still breathe.
You still remain.
That matters.
At 1.00am tonight, looking back over the week, I do not see a neat story of triumph.
I see a battlefield.
I see tears.
I see mental pressure.
I see accusations.
I see exhaustion.
I see old patterns trying to reassert themselves.
I see darkness trying to sell itself as rest.
But I also see grace.
I see the hand of God holding me when I felt ashamed to need holding again.
I see mercy not withdrawing because I was messy.
I see Christ staying near when I was not shining.
I see the cross standing firm while my emotions moved like weather.
That is the power of the lament.
Lament kept me relational when pain wanted me isolated.
Lament kept me honest when pride wanted me hidden.
Lament kept me praying when despair wanted me silent.
Lament kept me facing God when shame wanted me running.
Lament turned suffering into conversation.
Lament refused to let darkness become the only voice in the room.
Some people think strength means never breaking.
I no longer believe that.
Some of the strongest moments in a believer’s life are not public victories.
They are private cries.
The prayer whispered through tears
The trembling confession.
The exhausted plea for help.
The decision not to quit tonight.
The refusal to surrender identity to a passing storm.
The reaching toward Christ with bloodied hands.
That is strength shaped by grace.
If you had looked at me this week externally, you may not have seen much.
That is the strange thing about internal battles.
The loudest wars often happen in silence.
People can be at work, at church, in traffic, in supermarkets, answering messages, making coffee, posting online, while simultaneously fighting to stay alive inside.
That should make us gentler with one another.
Everyone carries unseen fronts.
Tonight I also feel something else.
Gratitude.
Not gratitude for pain itself.
Not gratitude for suicidal thoughts.
Not gratitude for overwhelm.
But gratitude that none of those things had the final word.
Gratitude that Christ remained.
Gratitude that I am still here writing this.
Gratitude that the cross still holds when my mind does not.
Gratitude that despair knocked but did not own the house.
Gratitude that another week, however ugly, has been survived.
And sometimes survival is holier than people realise.
There are seasons where survival is not small
It is sacred.
To keep going.
To stay sober.
To stay present.
To keep choosing life.
To keep bringing pain into the light.
To keep returning to Jesus.
That is no minor thing.
As Saturday begins here in Australia, I do not know exactly what next week holds.
I know battles may return.
I know some wounds heal slowly.
I know the mind can be unpredictable terrain.
I know growth is not linear.
I know sanctification is rarely glamorous.
But I also know this:
Christ crucified is enough for whatever comes.
Enough when I feel strong.
Enough when I feel shattered.
Enough when prayers are clear.
Enough when prayers are groans.
Enough when joy feels near.
Enough when all I have is lament.
That is where I stand tonight.
Not polished.
Not cured.
Not pretending.
But standing.
Held by a mercy I did not earn.
Anchored to a cross I still need.
Breathing in the quiet at 1.00am while the world sleeps.
And if this week taught me anything again, it is this:
Sometimes the most powerful prayer is not eloquent.
Sometimes it is simply the cry of a broken man who still turns toward Jesus.
That cry is not failure.
That cry is faith.
That cry is lament.
And there is power in it.
About the Author
Dylan Verdun Sullivan is the founder of Refined by Fire Press and an Australian author indexed in the National Library of Australia. As a Level 7 Local Guide with over 1.7 million views on Google Maps, he documents the intersection of faith, recovery, and the light found in ordinary places.
- Read the Memoir: Kissed by Death on Amazon
- Explore the Journey: Follow Dylan on Google Maps
- Connect on Instagram: @porkysparadise
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