I'm reluctant to admit it and embarrassed to say so, but I cried really hard the other day. (Who doesn't? But who likes to outwardly expose it?) It was mostly because of a total overwhelmation of everything. I was already way too tired by going too many nights in a row without sleep and then that was topped off with too many things hitting me all at different angles and… all at the very same time. Hard hits! And mean ones! That and I suppose a girl just needs a good cry every now and then. I try so hard to be "macho" most of the time....... but I can only hide it for so long, I sometimes can't do anything at all to help it... Every once in a while I just can't control it anymore and my ‘girl’ just boils over and spills out.
I can honestly say that I didn't see it coming. (Sometimes I'm good at even hiding my feelings from myself. I stifle them down and paint a big smile and hope my feelings believe it.) I sat down to do my make-up and so many things were weighing on my mind that I felt that before "making" the face I must stop to talk to my Father first. So. I knelt on my knees and put my head in my hands and before I could say very much at all I found myself sobbing before Him. I told Him there was so much that I didn't know where to begin. That I felt like everything was such a mess that I needed Him to help me everywhere, but that I didn't even know what to say or what in the world to ask Him for. I felt I couldn't even begin my "list" of things I needed, because it was everything and too many to number. So... like I said, I just held my head in my hands and cried there. Then, I felt Him ask me, "Just one thing then, Sharon? Just name Me one. And we'll start with that one and come back to the rest tomorrow."
Well... if you know how that works, tenderness towards someone already tendered only makes them more tender….so I sobbed even harder.
It was the wildest thing. I wouldn't have even shared all of this with you if it weren't for this part...
The tears that I cried literally dripped from my lashes into my cupped hands and held there. When I had finished my cry and picked up my head and saw those two puddles of tears I thought, "He keeps each one. He bottles each tear. Each drop speaks its own unique hurt. Each shapes to the exact detail of the pain that birthed it. Not one is missed. Not one overlooked. Not one shed in vain. Not one weighed worthless, or even deemed weightier than the other. Not one wiped away except by the tenderest touch by the nail-scarred hands that hung on a cross to save me from mine." And I knew as I looked at them that though they'd dissipate from my hands in a very few moments and that I would no longer be able to see them, I knew that they wouldn't be forgotten by my Father. I knew that He held them and that they were safe in His hands. I knew that He not only sees me when I sob, and that He not only hears my heart in its hurt, but that He cares. He cares when we cry! He knows! And He even understands why! Better yet, He even understands why when we don’t!
I know that! You know that. And not only are we told that He hears us when we cry, but we're told too that He runs to our rescue when we do. We may not see it yet, but Help's on its way. I can mark it down and count on it. I can wait… KNOWING… and anxiously anticipating the help of my Father, my God, my Lord and my Savior, my Creator, my Maker, my Ransomer, my Redeemer, my Restorer.
What was so incredibly amazing to me at that particular moment is the thought that some feelings are felt so huge and so deeply that they can’t be hidden and stifled and kept secret without showing themselves. They show up (whether we want them to or not) by welling up and pooling over and pouring out into a liquidized formation.
Huge!
Who would have thought it but God? That we would have a need of such a release from somewhere so deep?! And that once grievously showered that we'd feel better after the laborious cleansing? And then to KNOW that God keeps that liquidized feeling that was cried from within until out....??? Wow, at His love towards us! How precious we really must be to Him! How much He must care that He would take that salty-watered feeling and bottle it to keep it with Him!
It's found in Psalm 56:8. That's where it tells us, "Thou tellest my wanderings: put Thou my tears into Thy bottle: are they not in Thy book?" Can you imagine the tears that are spilled to be read in the book that He's written? Can you imagine the words, the stories, the feelings, the emotions, the pain, the joys, the passions that those tears tell in their talk? For tears are an expression of feelings that can't be said by sandwiching them into words. They are definite and unique expressions that say much more than mere words could ever begin to verbalize. Tears have their own voice when our voices can’t talk, when our voices cannot fathom what it is or how to say it. Those tears tell where our thoughts have walked and where they’ve both wandered and wondered. Sometimes words don’t need to be (or cannot be) said, but feelings cannot help but to be vocalized through the flooding of a tearful tale… a river of feelings in a water-falled trail. Tears speak in a universal tongue. No words need to be spoken for another to understand its unspoken expressing. They are messengers of our overwhelming sorrow or the wetted delight of our soul flooding over. It’s our overwhelming emotion so enormously filled that it’s automatically moved to spill out.... because it's too huge to keep silenced within.
We're given the promise in Psalm 126:5 that, "Those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy." I'm living proof of that truth again and again and again. For woe at the songs that He's given me to sing after many a tear has been shed… and the joy that I now have in my life after such tremendous sorrow!
And woe, too, at the ultimate of when the end has come when "the Lord GOD will wipe away all tears from off all of the faces" (Isaiah 25:8). Whoa at the thought!!!! For can you even begin to imagine the feel from the sweet tender touch of His hand???
Four times Psalm 107 says, "Then they cried out to the LORD in their trouble........ Then they cried out to the LORD in their trouble...... Then they cried out to the LORD in their trouble..... They they cried out to the LORD in their trouble." And then... in verse 20 of that psalm we're told that God "sent forth His word and He healed them." He sends forth His word to heal!.... for those that seek a word from Him to heal them He sends one! If that's not the sweetest thing, then I don't know what is! To me, I take that as His word being our tissue to wipe away our tears and mend our sorrows in the meantime, until we reach Heaven when His very Own fingers will wipe them away from our faces forever!
Dare I end this without pointing out this fact as well. After each of those four times that this chapter has stated, "Then then cried out to the LORD in their troubles" it says just as many times, "and He saved them (delivered them) from their distress...... and He saved them from their distress...... and He saved them from their distress...... and HE SAVED THEM FROM their distress!"
What hope those words are to me! If you've got a distress, then cry! But don't just cry to just anyone! Don't waste your tears! Cry out to the LORD who can SAVE you from it! He can deliver you from your distress! He can save you and free you from it!
My tears???? And yours!!!... He's bottled them and keeps them. Now how's that for a God!
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