Crying Over a Grill (and Other Normal Things)

My friend assured me I could do it. Boy, was he wrong.

I stared at the big box with the unassembled grill, and my chest tightened with dread. It was supposed to be a simple Saturday task. One of those mildly annoying but ultimately satisfying jobs — like raking leaves or organizing the junk drawer. Something that leaves you feeling moderately competent.

That was the plan. Instead, by mid-morning, I was sitting on the back patio, holding an instruction manual that had clearly been written by someone who hated me. In front of me: a table covered in bolts I couldn’t tell apart and grainy diagrams that made me feel both illiterate and … well … dumb. And it was blazing hot. I love the heat — please read that with every drop of sarcasm you can muster.

I literally started to cry.

I wish I were exaggerating. But the tears weren’t just about the grill. Or not entirely. They were about the week before the grill. A week that included church complaints, an underwhelming sermon, and a persistent feeling that I was just a little too tired, a little too behind, and a little too alone.

And then came the grill. The final straw. The thing that tipped the emotional Jenga tower. I stood there in the sun, hands greasy with frustration, and just came undone. Not the muttered, angry tears of mechanical rage. Real tears. Honest ones. The kind that sneaks up on you and make you feel a little embarrassed, even when no one’s watching.

It was grief. And that confused me, because — objectively — nothing truly tragic had happened. No one had died. No earth-shattering loss. Just … life. Normal, relentless, wearying life. So why was I crying?

Grief isn’t always loud. It doesn’t always come with caskets or casseroles. Sometimes it shows up in quieter ways — the slow fade of a friendship, the ache of aging, the feeling of being slightly out of place in your own life. And when those little griefs pile up, they press down on you. They don’t disappear. They wait. And then one day, in the heat, with a grill that won’t ignite, they speak.

That’s when I started to understand lament.

For most of my life, I thought lament was reserved for the big stuff. Death. Disaster. Deep loss. And it is, of course. I work as a hospice chaplain, and I see it every day. I sit beside people in their final days. I hear whispered goodbyes. I see grief that steals the breath from your lungs.

But there’s another kind of grief too. The kind we tend to ignore. The kind that shows up in Tuesday afternoons. In passing comments. In seasons where things don’t feel quite right, but you can’t explain why. There’s no funeral for that kind of loss. No meal train. Just you and the ache. And if you’re like me, you downplay it. You tell yourself it’s nothing. You try to be grateful. You count your blessings. You move on. Until you can’t. Until your soul says, This matters too. That’s where lament comes in.

Lament is not a performance. It’s not a poetic expression of sorrow with a three-point sermon baked in. It’s the raw prayer of someone who is still showing up, even when they don’t know what to say.

It’s a way of telling the truth: “God, I’m tired.” “God, I’m confused.” “God, I know this seems small, but it still hurts.” “God, are you even listening?” Lament isn’t about resolution. It’s about honesty.

***

One of the most freeing moments in my spiritual life came when I realized that God is not waiting for me to have the right perspective before I speak. He’s not offended by my confusion or my sarcasm or my shaky trust. He wants my heart, and sometimes my heart is weary from things that seem petty on paper. Like the sense that my work doesn’t matter. Or that I’m failing at something I once felt called to. Or that I’ve lost a part of myself I don’t know how to recover.

None of that fits neatly on a prayer card. But it’s real. God doesn’t need polished prayers. He doesn’t need me to find the lesson before I speak the pain. He just wants me — tired, frazzled, wanting-to-trust me. That’s what lament offers. A space to be unfiltered and still held.

Psalm 13  starts like this: “How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?” That’s not a sanitized prayer. That’s not something you embroider on a pillow. That’s someone in the middle of a real moment. Someone like me on the patio staring at a project, and a life, that just doesn’t seem to fit together.

The psalm doesn’t stay there, of course. That’s the beautiful thing about lament: it doesn’t just vent, it moves. A movement from honesty to hope. By the end of the psalm, David says: “But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation.” Not because the problem is fixed. Not because everything is okay now. But because he dared to bring the truth into God’s presence — and found God still there.

Lament isn’t about getting answers. It’s about knowing you’re not alone. Because in that quiet, overheated moment on the patio, I felt something shift. Not dramatically. Not instantly. But enough. Enough to know that I wasn’t just crying over a grill. I was naming something my heart needed to say. And I wasn’t saying it into a void. I was saying it to Someone.

Someone who sees, listens. Someone who doesn’t roll his eyes at my small griefs but calls them by name.

So if you’re carrying a quiet sorrow — a sense of failure, a hidden ache, a frustration you can’t quite articulate — don’t rush past it. You don’t need to explain it. Or fix it. Or compare it to someone else’s pain. You just need to name it. And maybe, somewhere in that naming, you’ll find the courage to bring it to God. Not because it’s big enough. But because you matter enough.

Even when it’s about a grill.