A Psalm for Those Who Grieve this Mother’s Day

As I shared over at Arabah Joy’s blog, many women struggle and grieve during Mother’s Day weekend. The Lord has encouraged me greatly through Psalm 13, and if your heart weeps this Mother’s Day, may these truths from God’s Word bring comfort and hope to you.

In this Psalm, let’s follow the Psalmist’s four questions, and then we’ll uncover the truth that answered the weeping of his broken heart.

“How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?”

In our grief, sometimes we feel like God has forgotten us. Our hearts can be tricked into wondering, “Has God withheld His very best from me?”

During our season of infertility, and especially after the loss of our first pregnancy through miscarriage, I identified with Isaiah 49:14, “The Lord has forsaken me, and the Lord has forgotten me.”

But God’s gentle answer is, “Can a woman forget her nursing child and have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, but I will not forget you. Behold, I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands…” Isaiah 49:14-16

And here, in this moment, we are called to TRUST God. Are we going to believe our feelings and emotions, or are we going to believe God’s Word? Even though we feel forgotten, what does He tell us?

“How long will You hide Your face from me?”

In our despair, we may glance around frantically for the warmth of our Savior’s smile, only to feel very distant and far from Him in our hour of need. At times when I have felt the most needy for God, often it was those very times that He felt the most distant.

Do not trust your deceitful heart (Jeremiah 17:9). Rather, as we see the Psalmist pray, we cry out, “Lift up the light of Your countenance upon us, O LORD!” (Psalm 4:6)

Cling to Him in the cold, shadowy places, and trust the love that you know is there but that you struggle to feel. Believe His Word that He is near to the broken-hearted, binding up their wounds, and wait upon Him. You will bask in the warmth of His comfort again very soon.

“How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart all the day?”

The longer I swim in my sorrow, the more derailed my thinking can become. I try to reason WHY. I fix my eyes on my problem, my sorrow, and my crushing load, and before long my heart is heavier than ever.

“There is not much good comes of talking to yourself unless there is a third One present.” (C.H. Spurgeon)

If we PREACH to our souls rather than continuing in our despair, pouring out our hearts to the One who has borne all our griefs and carried our sorrows, there we find hope.

“Why are you in despair, O my soul? And why have you become disturbed within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him for the help of His presence.” (Psalm 42:5)

“How long will my enemy be exalted over me?”

Has the ugly stain of envy blemished your heart? I know that it has broken mine, and I hate that feeling of sinful envy more than I think I hate anything else.

Sometimes envy is brought on by “friends” like Peninnah. Do you remember her? Hannah could not bear children, because God had closed her womb, and her rival, Peninnah, would provoke Hannah bitterly to irritate her, because of what God had done to Hannah.

It grieved Hannah so deeply that she would weep and be unable to eat. Sometimes, people belittle our pain, with well-meaning but hurtful comments like,

“Well, it’s really for the best.”
“You weren’t ready to have another child yet anyway.”
“It was just her time to go.”
“It’s time for you to move on.”
“Maybe God knows you can’t handle children right now.”
“It’s better to be married for awhile before having kids anyway.”
“It’s selfish for you to wish that she were back here on earth.”
“Surely you must have done something wrong for God to punish you this way.”

Envy takes our gaze from God, and we echo the oldest lie in the Book: “God doesn’t love me. He is holding out on me.”

We look around at other women like Peninnah, and it looks to us like those women’s hearts and hands are full of blessings, their life is rich and blessed, and we’re the ones left scrambling for answers and whose hearts are breaking.

And sometimes, like Peter walking on the water and taking his gaze off of Jesus, we begin to sink into envy when we sit quietly in our pew on Sunday morning or walk the aisles of the grocery store. We might ask God, “But what about her?! Why are you treating me differently than you treat her?” And God tells us like He told Peter, “What is that to you? You follow Me.” (John 21:22)

And with a Father’s gentle, yet firm hand, He cups our face and turns our gaze to Himself, where we learn to proclaim, “Do not rejoice over me, O my enemy. Though I fall I will rise; though I dwell in darkness, the LORD is a light for me.” (Micah 7:8)

“But I have trusted in Your steadfast love.”

This is the truth upon which the Psalmist cast his broken heart. He learned to trust God’s steadfast love through rolling his heavy load of grief and confusion onto the shoulders of the One who was his Friend and Advocate.

Like the Psalmist, take up your cause with God.

Plead with Him as you see the Psalmist doing here in Psalm 13, or over in Psalm 42, or in Psalm 73. Start right here and ask God these questions along with the Psalmist in Psalm 13:1-2.

At the end of this very short chapter, the Psalmist is singing! Yes, he is rejoicing, singing, and praising God. How does this happen? How do our hearts go from crying and howling to God, “HOW LONG??” to singing, “I rejoice in Your salvation! I sing to You, because You have dealt bountifully with me!”

Did the Psalmist suddenly receive all that he had ever wanted? Were his griefs erased? Does this mean that God will now open your womb, bring back your beloved son or daughter, or restore to you a life of joy with the ones that you have lost?

Well, yes and no.

No, the problems the Psalmist is grieving did not go away sometime between the beginning of the Psalm and its end. The Psalmist is singing and rejoicing now because He has TRUSTED in the Lord. He has set his eyes on what is unseen, and with a heart of faith, he looks to the salvation and goodness of his God. He believes in God’s goodness because He believes that God is who He says that He is — regardless of the deep waters that threaten to drown him now.

But will God redeem the pain of these years? Yes.

Is friendship and intimacy with God a higher prize than the loss of those things which break our hearts? Yes — He is a very great reward.

In looking with eyes of faith to God, God turns our mourning into gladness. He gives us beauty for ashes. He restores to us the years that the locusts have eaten.

The barren woman rejoices, because although her hands are empty, she has put her hand into the hand of the One who was crucified for her, and He will raise her up with Him on that last day.

The mother who grieves her lost babies WILL SEE THEM AGAIN because her Savior has conquered death and the grave.

The young woman who has lost her mother while she still needed her will someday have every tear wiped from her eyes, because sin and death will not reign forever.

But until that time, until death is swallowed up in victory, we trust in the Lord.

And the greater our burden, the harder we lean on Him.

And so, as you sit in the pew this Mother’s Day, or if in your home you are grieving loss and heartache this weekend, trust in the Lord. He alone knows the true depth and pain of your emotions, for He, too, knows the pain of losing a child. He knows the agony of death and grief. He gave up His only Son, the only begotten Son that He loved, so that He could abolish all the tragedy brought into this world through our believing the lie that God is not really good.

Trust Him. Trust the One who loves you.

(This article on Psalm 13 leans heavily upon C.H. Spurgeon’s sermon, “Howling Changed to Singing.”)