The Redemption of Lament
After serving as a single missionary in Brazil for 10 years, I married a Jamaican (that’s another story). I knew there would be cultural differences to work through, but I loved working through those—hadn’t I been doing it for 10 years already? In a turn of events, we returned to Brazil as a couple, and served, as well as had two baby girls, for the next six years. Continuing the surprises, we returned home from the field the end of 2020, in the middle of a pandemic.
Unexpectedly, returning during Covid gave us time and shelter to process and grieve personally, and as a family. I never once had to pretend that everything was normal, because no one thought anything was normal anymore. I wasn’t alone in my counter culture shock: everyone in the whole world was searching for new normals.
What I didn’t expect, in all of the changes and laments, was a change in labels. We’d always been a multicultural family, but previously had been seen by most people as “that missionary family.” In Brazil, I had been clearly seen as American, my husband was Jamaican, and my daughters were Brazilian. Now we were labeled white, Black, and mixed/culturally ambiguous/”What are you?”
When I realized my 5 year old daughter would be going from a small Christian private school where her mom was one of her teachers and everyone looked like her to a large public school of who knows who that were taught who knows what about people who looked different like her, I realized that I’d put off figuring out what it meant to be a multicultural family for too long, hiding behind being a missionary family.
As I put together our family history, for her to understand where she came from and to know her story and that it was special, no matter what anyone said, I fell headlong into a season of lament. I quickly outlined my family history of German Swiss Scotch, and then realized that my husband had no such written history. I grasped at oral stories told during side moments of our wedding: and I lamented. I realized our last name “Ferguson” was Irish, but came from an enslaver who raped a woman but then decided to bestow his name on their son. I was going to have to explain slavery. We were returning to a country recently torn over George Floyd’s murder and the repercussions: I’d have to tell our country’s story of race as well. How do you do that for a 5 year old? I lamented.
At the Velvet Ashes Retreat, Psalms 13 gave the outline I desperately needed for lament: Complaint (Ps. 13:1-2), Petition (Ps. 13:3-4), and Resolution (Ps. 13:5-6) in returning to truth. I sat in complaint (and anger) for quite a long time. In a conversation with a friend, she wisely used questions to point me toward truth: “Racial history and injustice is a sad, horrible mess that continues today: where is God in it? What does God want to do with it?”
Those simple questions where what drew me into petition and resolution. I found hope in lament, and the small little corner of practical application that I could hold onto in the fog of grief. When I went to God with my question of what He wanted to do with this mess, His answer was simply: “Redemption. My plan is Redemption.”
He brought me back to the big picture, the story I’ve always been wrapped up in and captivated by: of a world gone wrong, broken but loved by God, and His plan to bring it back to Himself. He knew the history of Jamaica, America, and Brazil, and how each of those would affect my beautiful multicultural daughters. He knew the history of racial injustice and evil mindsets passed on that might even affect how my daughter’s classmates relate to her. And He wanted to redeem it all.
As grateful as I am to be living in a time where it is legal for me to marry my husband (only since 1967 in Loving V. Virginia), there is still so much to lament in racial issues today. When I see the Church’s complicit part in injustice—hence my part as well--it is a hard pill to swallow. I’ve had many conversations with God about how I’d happily trade my free-will for Him to just get on and fix it instead.
But He’s chosen us to be His hands and feet. We are the imperfect tools He has decided to use to share the story and power and picture of His great redemption and how it actually works in daily life. Just as I struggled with suffering (specifically from poverty) on the mission field, and why God allowed it, I now needed (and still need) to struggle through this back at home.
It’s been really beautiful to see the doors God has opened to work to bring His beautiful, complete redemption into our family, and to share it with others. To share the story of our family history, world history, but also God’s story. To repent from how we’ve broken and stomped on God’s plan. To go back and learn the incredible implications of that simple part in Genesis that powerfully says, “We are all made in HIS image.”
Lament isn’t gone, but it has moved from overwhelming pain to helpful companion. I don’t always appreciate it, but I have learned to sit with it. What are your laments? What does God want to do with them?