Tears
Day 3
Image courtesy of Rebecca Webb Wilson, Hawkeye Nature Photography
You have noted my lamentation; put tears into your bottle; are they not written in your book? —Psalm 56:8
Tears. What a strange capacity we humans are given! The ability to literally pour out the distress within our bodies. The salty wetness of the ocean, the womb.
You may feel that you can’t stop crying. You cry yourself to sleep, and when you awake, there the tears are again, your most resolute companion. You feel a stab of impatience with yourself for not being able to get a grip. So you dab at your eyes, try to pull yourself together and hope makeup will cover the evidence. Out you go bravely to face the world. And then, here they come yet again, unbidden, at the most inopportune time. It’s been months since your spouse died, but you see a couple shopping in the grocery store. How embarrassing. You leave the cart right where it stands and hurry out the door before anyone notices you are crying. Again. Your tears make other people uncomfortable and they wish you would get hold of yourself. If only you could.
Or maybe you wish you could cry. But there’s a dam behind your eyes and the tears won’t come. You feel the pressure though. You’re afraid that if the dam does break you will not be able to stop the torrent. Ever. So you frantically, desperately, perhaps unconsciously, do everything you can think of to shore up that dam. Sleep. Eat. Drink. Shop. Watch any mind-numbing thing on TV. Whatever it takes.
It may help to imagine the bottle that holds all your tears, the ones you have shed and the ones you cannot shed. It may help to remember that your tears are known to another; they are numbered and kept by the One who gave you this ordinary and exquisitely useful gift.
O God, Help me to trust that you are holding my grief in your great and tender heart. Amen.
