We should be willing to act as a balm for all wounds.

And so we gain hope—not from the darkness of our suffering, not from pat answers in books, but from the God who sees our suffering and shares our pain.

Neither explaining suffering nor offering a program for the elimination of suffering, Lamentations keeps company with the extensive biblical witness that gives dignity to suffering by insisting that God enters our suffering and is companion to our suffering.

Neither prophets nor priests nor psalmists offer quick cures for the suffering: we don't find any of them telling us to take a vacation, use this drug, get a hobby. Nor do they ever engage in publicity cover-ups, the plastic-smile propaganda campaigns that hide trouble behind a billboard of positive thinking. None of that: the suffering is held up and proclaimed—and prayed.

Lamentations is insurance against premature comfort, against "healing the wounds of my people lightly" During the time of ruin there are always those who attempt to cover the wounds of judgment with band-aid comfort. But comfort cannot function apart from a serious grappling with the pain of judgment.

I never had time to think about my beliefs until my 28-year-old daughter Paula fell ill. She was in a coma for a year, and I took care of her at home until she died in my arms in December of 1992.

You picked me up from school You attended all my sporting functions You bought me a car Gave me use of a credit card But how can I feel pain, How can I feel pain, How can I feel pain When you're being so supportive?

Mental illness is nothing to be ashamed of, but stigma and bias shame us all.

I would go to the deeps a hundred times to cheer a downcast spirit. It is good for me to have been afflicted, that I might know how to speak a word in season to one that is weary.

We live in an emotionally fragile culture. We are in touch with every hurt past, present, and perceived. We are the walking wounded, and we want everyone to know.

I have suffered most of the things I write about - or my friends have.

Suffering, if it is accepted together, borne together, is joy.