What is it about tears?
Why do they make us feel…I don’t know, unsettled or sad?
I’ve been in a heavy season of tears this year. They began awhile ago (maybe Junish) and show no signs of ending.
It’s getting ridiculous
They fall at home while I watch a sitcom
They fall at the sight of my dog while she itches
They fall at church–anytime I walk in the door
I can’t figure out how to stop them! They’re ruining my makeup and giving me sinus atrophy. I’m about to see a doctor for anti-tear medication…I just want to be able to walk across a room and not cry!
Yesterday, in service we sang about Jesus on the throne, high, lifted up, and so on and so on and all I could do was lift my hands and cry. I’m learning to walk out of the apartment with massive amounts of kleenex in my purse.
Emotions are tricky aren’t they? Just when we think we’ve mastered a particular one a different one rears it’s head and we find that though we display the face of anger, what we really are is unhappy or sad or hurt. Emotions act like symptoms to an illness. Diagnosing the illness is the real issue but we treat the emotions instead. Instead of allowing all the emotions to surface and identifying them for what they are we try to explain, justify, use and control them.
I realize that I’m probably dipping into a mental health professional’s arena and I will state categorically that I am NOT a mental health professional, just in case you wanted to consult and be cured of whatever ails your mind–please don’t come to me.
In fact, I’ve been to only one professional mental health person in my entire 58 years and she was a social worker trained in family counseling. Very nice lady, made good observations but categorically stated that I was one of the most sound people she’d ever spoken with and probably only needed her as a backup because I didn’t have a good friend available.
So why all these tears?
All I can say is this…The Holy Spirit
For some reason, completely inconceivable to me, he is working out things in my life that have been lying low for decades. “It’s a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the Living God” (Hebrews 10:31) should also read “It’s a tearful thing to fall into the hands of the Holy Spirit”. I’m still trying to make sense of some of it, it just seems that if it hasn’t been fixed by now what’s the point? I mean shoot, it’s not hurting anyone, it doesn’t bother anyone, it’s not wrong, it’s not sin, it’s just “stuff”.
“Stuff” is the Holy Spirit’s forte’
Like my issue with miraculous healing
My issue with capital building programs
My issue with giving 10% (when it’s all his anyway)
My issue with being inconvenienced
My issue with weight loss
My issue with workaholism
My issue with white cats (nah…that’s more of a stronghold!)
Isn’t all this just “Stuff”? As I mentioned, it’s not hurting anyone, no one has to know about it and it’s not sin so why are my tear ducts so fluid when my “stuff” is touched.
Beats me
But I know it’s a work of the Holy Spirit cuz ain’t nothing I’m doing to make it happen! What astounds me is that He is intimately interested in pursuing these things in my life despite my own settledness with them. I have to conclude that,
He loves me still
He loves me so much He can’t allow me to be held hostage by “stuff”
He loves me so much that He desires me to be whole and free
When you’ve been a committed Christian for many years the practice of our faith becomes more habitual, almost stale. Go to church, serve in Sunday School, give of your income, attend small group, study your Bible, pray by the list/card/phone call/leading, and so on and so on and so on…The kids grow up, leave home, go to college, find jobs or ministries, marry, have their own kids, life feel settled. You start to think of retiring, where you’ll live on that meager fixed income and what that will look like. Your “stuff” isn’t so immediate or such a big concern.
Maybe it’s because our kids have moved out, found jobs but are still waiting to begin their own families. Maybe it’s because we’re in that transition stage of life, not retired but not as interested in building careers. Maybe (and this is a big one) it’s because we moved to the city where we have a church that believes the Holy Spirit plays an active role in transforming lives (ya think?!) but whatever the case may be, my “stuff” is getting tweaked and the tears keep flowing.
What utterly slays me about it is that it continues to confirm that He Loves me. He’s NEVER done with me and He will continue to tweak, mold, shape, conform me to his image as long as He can. It’s powerful, amazing and all consuming.
If it means I cry, then I cry…
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