Lament in Business

Risk is part of the definition of what it means to be an entrepreneur. When you become a business owner, you're essentially raising your hand and saying, "I'm willing to risk more and risk more often" — knowing full well that failure is going to be a regular occurrence for you. As Thomas Edison famously quipped, "I have not failed 10,000 times — I have successfully found 10,000 ways to make a lightbulb that will not work." Failure is just part of the entrepreneur package.

But here's the unglamorous side of that equation: if risk is baked into the deal, so is loss.

Every failed pitch, every client who ghosted you, every product launch that flopped, every partnership that fell apart, every employee who disappointed... they are all ways in which grief enters into our business story. Sometimes that grief looks like one big moment, like the woman who quit her job and expected her business to take off, only to find that her growth has been much slower than she thought it would be. She cries out, “God, where are you? I took a leap of faith and you weren’t there to catch me.” Other times, the grief is more layered. It can look like a thousand tiny disappointments that stack up into a chronic grief we may not even realize is there. In my own business journey, the long years of pouring myself into my business without seeing the results I expected to led me to a place of self-protective grief and an underlying question I didn't want to admit was lurking there; "God, are you really for me?"

We look at the cutting floor of God’s workroom and we see so many of our desires laying there, unrealized. And we wonder, “God, what are you doing? Why didn’t you show up for me in the way I wanted you to? Where are you?”

If you’re like me, your tendency is to stuff that disappointment and doubt, and to just keep it moving. It can feel like business grief is somehow different than the grief we experience in other parts of life.

For instance, if we lost a loved one, we would know the right answers and we would have good resources to help us process it. But with business disappointment, we feel alone. We feel guilty for the struggle. So we stuff it down and deal with it how the world tells us to: we try to fix it.

We hunt for the solution to ease our pain. We think, “If I can turn this story around, then I won’t be struggling with these feelings anymore. It’s my fault because I haven’t figured it out yet.” Business culture tends to worship resilience and positivity. We celebrate the successes and gloss over all the failures that preceded it. But leaders who never learn to lament will carry unprocessed grief forward into their decisions, their team leadership, and their sense of self-worth. That weight accumulates. The business world doesn't have a category for lament in business. When things don't go as we had hoped, we are told to stay positive and try again. We are taught that comfort to our grief will come when we finally "make it". This is the world's way of bypassing our grief because they don't have a true solution to it. But we need to call this out for the false savior that it is. Our savior is not success. Our Savior is Jesus Christ who brings us real comfort, regardless of our circumstances.

Now, lament can feel like a very heavy word. When we hear it, we tend to picture someone in sackcloth and ashes — weeping at a graveside, devastated by catastrophic loss. And so when a prospective client says no, or a launch falls flat, or a year's revenue ends far short of where we hoped, we hesitate to use that word. Lament feels like too much, like we're being dramatic.

But lament is not reserved only for severe loss. It is simply the honest language of grief, and Scripture gives us permission to it freely, for all kinds of pain. Not every psalm of lament is about death or disaster. Some are about exhaustion "I am weary with my moaning" (Psalm 6:6). Some are about being betrayed or misunderstood (Psalm 55:12-14). Some are simply about unmet longing (Psalm 84).

My own temptation is to think that my business is in a separate realm than my other trials. I know how to apply a good theology of suffering to relational pain, to sickness, and to heartbreak. But what about the pain of unrealized dreams? My temptation is to think that God can not care much about that. I just need to toughen up. But that’s not what Scripture tells us. No, Scripture shows us that God cares even about the sparrow that falls (Matt 10:29-31). If an animal so common and trivial is cared for, Jesus argues, “Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.” (v. 31). The Bible does not make a distinction between our griefs as though grief over a relationship is more important than grief over something in our business. If you feel pain, grief, or disappointment, then you can rest assured that Jesus cares about it. Not only does God also welcome our grief, but he also welcomes our complaints, our questions, our doubts, and even our accusations. Of all the songs in the Bible, laments comprise over a third of them. We are given such a large volume of Biblically inspired language to voice our feelings of abandonment, disappointment, grief, anger, and doubt to God. He is unshaken by our questions, and like the kind Father that He is, He welcomes us to work though those feelings with Him.

We have lots of examples in Scripture of lament, ones that often make me uncomfortable because of their brutal and raw honesty. We even have a whole book of Lamentations. Laments give us Biblical permission to express how we feel, even if we know those feelings are not 100% theologically accurate.

For example, in Lamentations chapter 3 we have these verses:

“I am the man who has seen affliction under the rod of his wrath;he has driven and brought me into darkness without any light;surely against me he turns his hand again and again the whole day long…He has walled me about so that I cannot escape; he has made my chains heavy;though I call and cry for help, he shuts out my prayer… he has made my paths crooked…He has filled me with bitterness; he has sated me with wormwood.He has made my teeth grind on gravel, and made me cower in ashes;my soul is bereft of peace; I have forgotten what happiness is;so I say, ‘My endurance has perished; so has my hope from the Lord.’”(selected verses from Lamentations 3)

Were those sentiments true of God in the life of Jeremiah? Had God turned his hand against him? Had he shut out his prayers? Had he made his path crooked? Had his hope from the Lord perished?

No. As we see a few verses later…

“But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope:The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end;they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.‘The Lord is my portion,’ says my soul, ‘therefore I will hope in him.’The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him.It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.”Lamentations 3:21-26

Sometimes we need to pour out our grief before God without censorship, and we are given permission and so much biblically inspired language for how to do that. What a kind God to give us words that describe our pain even better than we know how to! And we learn something from this too: what we feel in the moment to be a reason for doubt has already been anticipated by God, experienced by saints who have gone before us, and answered in Scripture. We are not surprising God. And in Him our tensions, whether answered or unanswered come to rest.

Now, you might be thinking: aren’t there many verses that tell us not to grumble? Isn’t that what God killed people for in the Old Testament?

Yes. But there’s a big difference between complaining about God and complaining to God. Our fallen human nature wants to run to others to complain, but lament is us going to God Himself with our complaints. It’s actually an act of trust, because we are looking with expectation to God for the solution. Mark Vroegop explains it this way:

“Lament is a form of prayer. It is more than just the expression of sorrow or the venting of emotion. Lament talks to God about pain. And it has a unique purpose: trust. It is a divinely-given invitation to pour out our fears, frustrations, and sorrows for the purpose of helping us to renew our confidence in God.” - Mark Vroegop [1]

My daughter has been enjoying the old Disney Cinderella movie lately, and one of the songs encapsulates the attitude we often approach our business grief with: “No matter how your heart is grieving, if you keep on believing, the dream that you wish will come true.” 

“No matter how your heart is grieving, if you keep on believing, the dream that you wish will come true.” - Disney's Cinderella (1950)

Don’t get me wrong, the song is one of the most beautiful songs to ever come from Disney in my opinion. But that’s a terrible philosophy to approach grief with! How often I have treated my business disappointments this way! "Just keep believing and your dreams will come true." Instead, Jesus invites us to bring our burdens to Him.

“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”Matthew 11:28-30

Rest and healing for our souls comes, not when we stuff our emotions and just keep on believing, but when we bring our burdens to Jesus and allow His compassionate heart to meet us.

The reality is that no matter how well we steward our time, our life, our opportunities, and our resources, we will assuredly come to the end of our lives with a long list of missed opportunities, dashed hopes, and unrealized dreams. It's part of living in a fallen and sin-stained world. We need that biblical reality check. Not to discourage us, but to keep us from chasing success as though it can finally make us okay. It can't. It was never designed to save us from our grief.

The good news is that our okayness doesn’t come from our achievements, it comes from Jesus. And on every step of your entrepreneur journey, Jesus is more than sufficient to comfort, strengthen, and establish you. He is with you now, on whatever step of the journey you're on. He sees the sparrow that falls, and he sees the pitch that went nowhere. He sees the revenue goal you fell short of and when you grieve the dream that's taking far longer than you thought it would. I hope that you will join me in rejecting the false answer to grief that the business world holds out to us and instead experience the richness of a Savior who enters into it with us.

Footnotes: [1] Dare to Hope in God by Mark Vroegop https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/dare-to-hope-in-god