Be positive. Banish the negative. Be thankful. Messages like this stream through Facebook. But I disagree, because you just can’t be happy all the time.
One of my favorite Psalms goes like this: “In the evening, in the morning and at noon day, I will complain and lament. The Lord will hear me. He who is enthroned of old will deliver me.”
If we don’t whine, cry and complain, we get cluttered. Our thoughts feel stuffed behind cotton. We get so we don’t know how we feel. We can’t put one word next to the other.
Just the other day I was in a dark place and needed to vent. Two friends listened while I made my complaint. They offered their perspective. I felt better and, surprisingly, the shut door I was complaining about swung open.
Now, I don’t mean scratching our stories like a mosquito bite that widens and bleeds. I mean letting the complaint rise, speaking it, like Orual in Till We Have Faces, when she said, “The complaint was the answer. To have heard myself making it was to be answered.”
Besides, even if you don’t believe in God, there’s something to our finding the strength to go on, strength that is like the One who is enthroned of old delivering us when we speak our feelings, even if we complain.
I’m Katie Andraski, and that’s my perspective