complaint and sorrow

قَالَ إِنَّمَآ أَشْكُوا۟ بَثِّى وَحُزْنِىٓ إِلَى ٱللَّهِ وَأَعْلَمُ مِنَ ٱللَّهِ مَا لَا تَعْلَمُونَ ٨٦

12:86 He replied, “I complain of my anguish and sorrow to Allah, and I know from Allah what you do not know.

I lived at a time when many around me asserted that to feel intense sorrow, to suffer, to long for something or someone intensely, to suffer from loss and absence or lack and then to complain to God (most everyone I knew agreed there wasn’t much value in complaining to others) were defects, impieties, culpable weakness of faith and so on. They imagined that they could honestly value and exalt, adore and love something whose absence and lack accompanies no pain, that complaining was incompatible with gratitude and god-consciousness.

From Jacob’s words in revelation, I learned that surrendering to God means one knows one’s sorrows and what is paired with them in the human soul, namely complaints, are signs by which one can know what God promises to the soul, what is due to the soul. The soul witnesses what is its due by experiencing and witnessing sorrow at its felt lack, expressing complaint about this lack. With this complaint, and not in its abence and not by its supression or denial (and certainly not by refusing to love anything or anyone in this world in a way that one (tries to) insulate oneself against ever missing their absence and yearning to be united with them) one knows from God the news of, and promise of, such union.

I dont want to put my cart before the horse. Its not the case that I don’t feel sad and I don’t complain about anything because of my strong faith in God. It is the case that I feel sad and I complain about what I need and in so doing I can, if i choose to read the sign in myself or to read myself as a sign, witness and hear by God’s promise and decree for the soul i.e. that He is going to unite the soul permanently and eternally with everything (His beauties and perfections) that He has created it to love and that it is He who makes me know His intention and will in making it possible for me to complain when I suffer.