Why the Faithful Might Need a Complaints Department

Lent Day 7

I am blown away by the response to this Lent series. The number of you reading along. The comment section full of people praying for one another. This is the kindest place on the internet. What we’re talking about this Lent—how to live with what is unfinished, unsolvable, and still say yes to hope—is actually the heartbeat of my new book, Joyful, Anyway.

I wrote it because I kept asking: How do we live when nothing is fully fixed? How do we carry the ache and still find delight? How do we practice courage in a world that feels so heavy? If this series is resonating with you, the book goes so much deeper. It’s the full exploration of this question. I would love for you to pre-order JOYFUL, ANYWAY and keep going with me.

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Lent has a branding problem.

Ask most Christians what Lent is for and you’ll hear words like discipline, restraint, repentance, giving things up. Which is true—but incomplete. Lent is not only about what we renounce. It’s also about what we finally tell the truth about.

And one of the truths we are worst at telling is this:

Some things hurt because something unfair happened, and no one ever really acknowledged it.

We pray around this. We spiritualize over it. We turn it into gratitude exercises and growth metaphors. But we almost never say it plainly.

Which is strange, because the Bible is full of people doing exactly that.

Master of the Annunciation to the Shepherds. The Sense of Sight. Seventeenth century. Oil on canvas.

If you listen closely to yourself—or to your friends—you’ll notice something curious. There are stories we tell once, and then there are stories we tell a million times.

The story of the job you didn’t get.
The conversation in which someone crossed a line.
The friendship that ended without explanation.
The church that harmed you and moved on as if nothing happened.
The diagnosis that was missed.
The apology that never came.

These stories are not rehearsed because we love drama.
They repeat because they were never received.

We keep telling them because, somewhere deep down, we are still hoping for a witness. Or a reckoning. Or at the very least, a sentence that begins with: “You’re not wrong. That shouldn’t have happened.”

In Christian spaces, these stories often get edited mid-sentence.

We are encouraged to forgive quickly.
To search for the lesson.
To ask what God might be teaching us.
To be careful not to sound bitter.

But Lent, of all seasons, invites us to stop managing our tone.

One of the quiet lies many Christians absorb is that complaint is the opposite of faith.

But biblically speaking, complaint is not faithlessness. It’s relationship.

The Psalms are not polished prayers; they are protest letters (interspersed with a few pretty intense calls for vengeance that sound awkward when we read them out loud before the kids’ sermon.) The prophets do not file their concerns politely; they rail against the powers and principalities. Job does not resolve his suffering with insight; he lodges a case.

Complaint, in Scripture, is what people do when they still believe Someone is listening.

It’s what happens when ache moves from the body to language.

And that’s the shift Lent makes possible: from unnamed ache → to articulated grievance.

I feel like I’ve been waiting a long time for someone to say this to me, so let me joyfully say it to you: this Lent, you might have some serious complaining to do.

My best friend and I invented something we call “The List” when we were in college and new to being regularly wronged. The List was a shorthand for the most unfair, most infuriating, most heartbreaking events that life had thrown at us. Something terrible happens and we text each other: “ADDING THIS TO THE LIST.”

Together, we were filing formal paperwork with the Complaints Department of the Universe.

It was never written down, not really, but it was real enough. It was our way of keeping track of the terrible things that happened to us that really stuck. Did I have a teenage blowout with my sister over a Club Monaco shirt? Yes, but that doesn’t make the ledger of grievances. Items that make The List are painful, calcified, irrefutable evidence that something bad happened. And it left its mark.

Like the time I watched a friend publicly absorb blame for something she didn’t do because the truth would have embarrassed someone more powerful. Or the year I kept waiting for an apology that never came, only to realize that the silence was the answer.

Well, that’s on The List. That’s on The List forever.

The List is reserved for the moments when something went wrong in a way that never got put right.

My best friend and I were so deeply anxious about seeming bitter or unspiritual that, for a long time, we weren’t sure we could even admit these things to ourselves. But, in retrospect, we needed The List more than we needed a Gratitude List. We were completely out of practice in being honest.

There is something clarifying—almost stabilizing—about being able to say: That mattered. That hurt. That counts.

Spiritually speaking, The List did something important. It took our ache out of the vague, swirling chaos of our nervous systems and gave it language. It stopped us from turning every injustice inward, from assuming that if something hurt this much it must somehow be our fault.

Which, incidentally, is a very Lenten skill.

Because Lent is not just a season of restraint. It is a season of truth-telling. A season where we stop rushing past pain toward meaning and instead sit long enough to name what actually happened.

When we complain honestly—without polishing it into a testimony or redeeming it into a lesson—we do something spiritually countercultural. We refuse to confuse silence with holiness. We refuse to confuse forgiveness with amnesia. We refuse to call unfinished business “growth.”

Complaint, practiced this way, becomes a form of prayer.

So if you are looking for a Lenten practice this year—something ancient, biblical, and mildly inappropriate for polite Christian conversation—I humbly recommend filing a few formal grievances.

How to File a Complaint During Lent

A Brief Guide for the Faithful

1. Start with what you repeat.

   Not sure where to begin? Think about a story you end up retelling. If it wasn’t important, you probably wouldn’t be telling it for the zillionth time to the person next to you on a plane.

2. Begin with the facts.
   Name names! Someone didn’t hurt you in general. It was Linda!

3. Use complete sentences.
   God can handle specificity. (This is for your eyes only.)

4. Avoid adding a moral lesson at the end.
   Don’t worry about feeling like a good person. This is not about that.

5. Repeat as needed.
   If it comes back, it has not been received.

6. Feel free to use humor.
   The Psalms do.

7. Trust that honesty is not disobedience.
   It is often the beginning of faith. And if it still feels odd, let’s remember Jesus had some complaints about heading to the cross. We can do hard things, but we don’t always have to be happy about them.

Lent does not immediately ask us to be nicer versions of ourselves. It asks us to move toward God with honesty.

I can say, quite openly, that I never would have stayed a Christian if I didn’t believe God wasn’t equally outraged by my cancer, my misdiagnosis, and the things that have happened along the way that couldn’t be undone. It did me a world of good to picture the great creator of the universe putting down other people’s paperwork to hear about what happened to me.

Because sometimes the most faithful thing you can say—before repentance, before surrender, before resurrection—is simply this:

God, I am adding this to The List.

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Writing a list of deep grievances is obviously something you should do in private, not public or in a comment section. But I wonder if we could reflect on having a secret list. Do you find yourself re-telling stories? Wishing someone was filing paperwork on your behalf?

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This week’s reflections:

For ease, refer back to this post for this week’s reflections. The links will go live each morning:

• Thursday, February 26 - Lent Day 8: Learning to Stay

• Friday, February 27 - Lent Day 9: God is not grading your attitude.

• Saturday, February 28 - Lent Day 10: Gratitude is not a cure.

• Sundays during Lent are mini-feast days. No Lent Reflection.

• Monday, March 2 - Lent Day 11: When There Are No Good Answers

• Tuesday, March 3 - Lent Day 12: Someone With Skin On