Topic: Grief and Trauma Awareness — Key Scripture: Ruth 1:19-21
There’s a name change in Ruth 1 that I think we read past too quickly, because the book eventually turns toward redemption and we’re eager to get there.
Naomi has lost her husband and both of her sons. She returns to Bethlehem after years away, and when the women there recognize her and say her name, she stops them. “Do not call me Naomi; call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me”. Naomi means pleasant. Mara means bitter. She is asking the entire community to stop using the name that describes who she was and start using the name that describes what’s been done to her.
I don’t think this request should be softened. Naomi isn’t performing grief for effect, and she isn’t offering a temporary complaint she expects to walk back once she feels better. She’s asking for a fundamental redescription of her identity, because the losses she’s carrying feel less like something that happened to her and more like something that has actually changed who she is. Pleasant is gone. Bitter is what’s left. She wants her name to reflect the truth as she currently understands it, not a nostalgic version of who she used to be.
And then there’s the part of this passage that I think gets minimized even more than the name change itself: Naomi doesn’t just describe her grief. She assigns it a cause. “The Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me… the LORD has testified against me and the Almighty has brought calamity upon me”. She names God directly as the source of what’s happened. Not fate, not circumstance, not simply bad luck — God, specifically, dealing bitterly with her.
I think this is a very honest moment in Scripture, and one of the most common experiences I’ve encountered in grief that we’re least willing to talk about openly. When someone we love dies, especially suddenly or after prolonged suffering, a very natural response is to hold God responsible. Not as a careful theological position worked out after reflection, but as a raw, immediate accusation, the same way Naomi’s was. Why did You let this happen? Why didn’t You stop it? You did this to me!
I’ve felt some version of this myself, in seasons of loss that didn’t make sense to me at the time and, honestly, still don’t fully make sense to me now. There’s a particular kind of anger that grief produces, one that doesn’t always have anywhere appropriate to go, and God becomes the most obvious place to direct it, because He’s the one who could have intervened and, for reasons that cannot be explained, did not.
I don’t think Scripture asks us to suppress that response, and I’m not going to pretend Naomi’s accusation gets a tidy resolution within this chapter. It doesn’t. The text simply lets her say it, without rebuke, without a footnote explaining why she’s wrong to feel that way. The women of Bethlehem don’t correct her theology. They just witness her renaming herself, and the story moves forward with Naomi still going by the name she’s chosen, at least for now.
I think there’s something important in that lack of immediate correction. Grief that blames God doesn’t always get talked out of itself quickly, and I’m not sure it should be forced to. Naomi’s declaration sits in the text as an honest, unresolved statement of where she actually is — not a phase to be corrected before the narrative can proceed, but a real position that gets to exist without an immediate answer.
I want to be honest that I don’t have a clean way to close this out, and I don’t think I should manufacture one. Naomi calling herself Mara isn’t a problem this reflection is going to solve. It’s simply true that many of us, in the specific weight of a loss that hasn’t made sense, have said some version of what she said — that God dealt bitterly with us, that He is somehow responsible for what we’re carrying. I don’t think that accusation disqualifies anyone from faith, and I don’t think it needs to be resolved on any particular timeline.
Some grief can stay for a long time. Some names don’t get changed back quickly, if they ever fully do. I’m not going to pretend that’s a comfortable place to leave this, because it isn’t. But I think Naomi’s honesty deserves to be left exactly where she left it — unresolved, calling herself Mara, without anyone rushing in to tell her she shouldn’t.
If this resonates with where you are today, BRKN Soul Care is here. Book a free Introductory Conversation at brknsoulcare.org and take the first step. You don’t have to carry this alone.