Donald Trump won the election. It’s O.K. to lament that.
The country is sharply divided in the wake of this news; the results make that abundantly clear. For those who supported Vice President Kamala Harris, the emotions around her loss are complex and painful.
Exit polls indicate that white Catholics like me played a significant role in sending the former president back to the White House, but I’ll put my cards on the table: I am one of the Catholics who could not vote for Trump.
His dominating presence in American politics has characterized my young adulthood; I was an 18-year-old college freshman when he was first elected, and on the day he leaves office after this term, I will be 30 years old. I am not the first to write on his threat to the Constitution and our democratic future; the editorial boards of media publications, including the editors of this magazine, have issued that warning already. But the American people have made their choice, and while the movement toward justice doesn’t end here, this particular election does.
I am struggling to smile and nod and accept the message from well-intentioned people whom I love that everything will be fine, that I should trust in God and not despair. What do they really mean? How do they know that? From where do they grasp that sense of peace and calm that I can’t seem to wrap my head or hands around?
Sure, Jesus famously said it, more than any other phrase in the Gospels: “Be not afraid.” And Julian of Norwich wrote that “all manner of thing shall be well.” But I’m not Jesus, and I’m not a mystic. Today, I’m afraid. And there’s a whole lot that I’m not so sure will be well, at least for a while.
There is nothing wrong with the real and meaningful messages of hope, of letting worries go, of the spiritual detachment that can be found in Scripture and religious literature. (My colleague Brother Joe Hoover, S.J., wrote eloquently about this just before the election.) There is undeniable, holy truth to them. But if they feel insufficient to you today, I’m here to tell you that they’re not all Scripture has to offer in times of instability.
Lament is legitimate prayer. Not only can you bring your unfiltered concerns to God, but you’ll see that throughout Scripture, there is a long tradition of doing just that.
Name your suffering: The Book of Lamentations
The Book of Lamentations is an Old Testament response to the destruction of Jerusalem in the sixth century B.C. Made up of five poems, it serves as an aid in grieving for survivors of disaster, and its style and language are bold. An introduction to this book on the U.S. Bishops Conference website reads, “the reader is not so much engaged by the Book of Lamentations as assaulted by it.” This doesn’t sound like an overwhelmingly positive review, but when getting to the book’s deeper purpose, the same introduction has this to say: “With its unsparing focus on destruction, pain, and suffering the book serves an invaluable function as part of Scripture, witnessing to a biblical faith determined to express honestly the harsh realities of a violent world and providing contemporary readers the language to do the same.”
In the first chapter of Lamentations, Jerusalem’s desolation is deep. Her people cry out after their defeat by a powerful foe in Lam 1:12: “Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by? Look around and see. Is any suffering like my suffering that was inflicted on me, that the Lord brought on me in the day of his fierce anger?” The narrator goes on: “This is why I weep and my eyes overflow with tears. No one is near to comfort me, no one to restore my spirit” (Lam 1:16).
The book’s final chapter is a community lament, and while the people of Jerusalem still have enough faith in God to address him and ask for deliverance, the description of their suffering and loss has not waned.
For those of us who are disappointed and struggling today, this book is not just applicable if we squint. It’s a people’s prayer in the wake of a destructive world event, one that has brought instability to their region and made it difficult to see what the future might hold.
The book’s language reveals an important lesson about lament: You have to name and acknowledge your suffering. There’s a catharsis that comes with crying out, with describing just how difficult things feel. There’s no rush to find a silver lining; instead, the suffering collective takes a beat to say: “Wow, things really are that bad.”
As the people of Jerusalem ask, “Is any suffering like my suffering?” When we’re in the heat of our own pain, isn’t this exactly how we feel? Isolated, downtrodden, unseen and unrecognized? An honest prayer can include all of those feelings.
Cry out communally: The Psalms
There are more psalms of lament than there are of any other type. The Psalmist is looking around at the world he sees and crying out to God.
The Psalms were designed for liturgical worship, not simply for solitary reading. Like their original communities, we often hear them set to music. There is a sense in which many of the Psalms feel personal and expressive, and in singing them we channel that feeling in a way that is a step beyond words. And when we encounter the Psalms in the liturgy, we also come to them—and through our voices, participate in them—as a group.
Let’s look at one psalm of lament in particular: Psalm 74. Its language is asking God to enter into the communal recognition of suffering, to quite literally walk alongside the struggling people: “Direct your steps toward the utter destruction, everything the enemy laid waste in the sanctuary” (Ps 74:3). At 74:1, the people hold nothing back as they ask him with one voice how and why this kind of pain could possibly exist within his vision: “Why, God, have you cast us off forever? Why does your anger burn against the sheep of your pasture?”
Their example gives us permission to ask similar questions of God in the depths of our own pain, to ask one of the most powerful and encompassing questions of all: “Why?” They don’t hold back, and their cry is made even more poignant because of its strength in numbers. Are there ways that we too can join our voices in song, in protest or simply in shared grief with one another? Our community will not only be a source of strength of comfort for us; it might also show us new ways to communicate our feelings to God.
Speak to God directly: The Book of Job
The Book of Job is a favorite of mine. It’s dramatic, it’s challenging and it’s one of the best companions to lament that I can think of. While it has much to say to the suffering spirit, it does not necessarily prescribe any definitive answers.
Job goes from having a comfortable life to losing everything—and his faith is profoundly tested. He believes he has lived a good life and done his best to abide by God’s commands, so he can’t understand why he’s losing his family members, his livelihood, his whole way of life. He is frank and honest in his disappointment with his lot and in his confusion with God’s handling of the world.
Put simply: Job complains. He rants a bit. And he doesn’t just bemoan the state of things; he specifically criticizes God for his place in it all, and he is bold enough to ask God for an answer.
The lesson? Speak to God directly, even if you implicate him.
Eventually, God does appear in Jb 38:1-7—out of a storm. Some translations call it a “whirlwind.” God is not in human form, but in a form much more mobile and mysterious; similarly, his answer is less about the nature of divine justice than about the beauty of creation, the grandness of which Job couldn’t possibly know. It’s poetic and stirring, but it’s not necessarily an answer to the questions Job has spent several chapters raising his fist and asking.
And yet, Job is both in awe and deeply changed, saying: “I have spoken but did not understand; things too marvelous for me, which I did not know…By hearsay I had heard of you, but now my eye has seen you. Therefore I disown what I have said, and repent in dust and ashes” (Jb 42:3-6).
The Book of Job ends with an epilogue that in some translations is labeled as “Job’s restoration.” God gives Job twice the prosperity he enjoyed before, and he lives 140 more years before he dies, as the book puts it, “old and full of years.”
No complaint, no question, no struggle from before Job’s experience of God stood in his way of divine reward; God didn’t hold it against him. You might even say that crying out was a step along the way that made the encounter with God, which changed everything, possible.
An experience of God is different from any words of comfort you might be hearing right now, even if they are coming from a trusted person or a loved one. What moves Job is not words or logic; it is the chance to experience the whirlwind that is God and to be silent in the face of it, to be fundamentally different than he was before it came.
I would personally love it if a whirlwind appeared in my midst right now and helped me move through my post-election struggles, but I don’t expect it. But I’ll keep speaking to God, hoping that some sliver of divine experience helps me to keep moving forward, even if slowly.
Do not bury the pain
Lament is not just about getting the spiritual and emotional gunk out of your system so you can move on, back to productivity and business as usual. And yet, it is a necessary step to moving on, to feeling better, to reconnecting with God, others and yourself as you move through profound disappointment.
Perhaps in God’s time, in God’s home, all will be well, and that bliss will be something you and I will be able to share in. But here in this life on earth, suffering is real, and in the lived realities of God’s people, it means something. Our faith doesn’t have to mean we bury the pain of this truth somewhere deep inside of ourselves, never to make it manifest in words or tears.
I refuse to be numb to what’s happening around me, and that doesn’t mean I don’t have faith. My acts of resistance look like this: I let lament come out of my mouth. I open a page and write it down. I tell you that it’s O.K. if you also feel this way. You can join me in a chorus of strained voices, moving through the hurt that is part of real life.
If these Scriptural examples teach us anything, it should be this: You can pray when you’re angry—and you don’t have to hide how you feel. You can pray when you’re devastated—and God can handle it. You can pray about the signs of the times you live in, lamenting them if that’s what they call for—and you don’t have to couch your prayer in the search for some silver lining. Prayer can be honest, even when that makes prayer messy.
If I didn’t bring my anger, my fear and my sadness (and even the feelings I’m less proud of) to my prayer today, then I wouldn’t pray at all. I believe that this way is better.
