11 “Therefore I will not keep silent; I will speak out in the anguish of my spirit, I will complain in the bitterness of my soul.”
I have people in my office every day who are in the middle of crisis and experiencing this kind of pain. Their lives are crashing in around them, and they are at their breaking point. Sometimes they say things in those moments that are true feelings but don’t reflect the full breadth of their belief system. They express hopelessness even though they are Jesus-followers. They talk about wanting to kill someone, but have never hurt a thing in their lives. This kind of anguish filled speech needs someone to hear it. These feelings need to be expressed and accepted as a representation of a current reality. We often struggle to find words that will adequately express the depth of our pain, words often fall short of full expression. Some pains need to be felt, not just expressed in words. Job’s friend Eliphaz has just given him a knee to the metaphorical groin. He made light of Job’s loss of children and health. He said that Job was getting what his sin deserved. And Job really just needed someone to sit with him in his pain. I have found that no amount of words can meet the need of a person dealing with this depth of pain. Even the perfect ‘answer’ to a difficult question does not bring relief. So I try not to give ‘answers,’ even when I am asked a direct question. I instead speak to the underlying need to have the anguish acknowledged and validated. Some pain is too great for words.
The Arnold Journey 