“You’ve kept track of my every toss and turn through
the sleepless nights, each tear entered in your
ledger, each ache written in your book.”
Psalm 56:8, The Message
“Recovery is rough, and healing isn’t easy,” I thought as I gazed around the room scanning faces at a recent CR meeting Home – Celebrate Recovery®. Emotions take on so many different looks, especially when worn on our faces 😉.
Testimonies can be hard to listen to. My first experience hearing one shared was when I was in my mid-twenties; I attended an AA meeting to support a friend. It was an uncomfortable experience, and I couldn’t wait to get out of there 🏃♀️. I remember thinking, I’m never going to one of those again.” And, I also remember thinking, “You have to be pretty messed up to have to go to those.”
That’s laughable now, twenty-five years later.
“The man who had been miraculously
healed was over forty years old.”
Acts 4:22, The Message
During another recent meeting, we were given some gut-wrenching prayer requests, and as we prayed together, we cried together 🙏😢.
“Whoa, that was beautiful,” someone mentioned afterward.
“Minus all the tears and snot,” I quietly commented while passing a box of tissues.
“Hey, don’t knock it. Our tears are healing.”
Our tears are healing, and I know it – but in that moment I was looking through my own negative lens because I felt I had failed at a goal I had set for myself. The goal is being able to listen to others express their hurt pain without crying myself, it’s important to me personally to gain self-control in that area. So, I walked away from that meeting feeling like a flop.
“For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.”
2 Timothy 1:7, ESV
But the Lord didn’t allow me to wallow in my perceived failure. While walking to my car after that meeting, softly spoken in my thoughts I heard, “Don’t miss what he was saying to you.”
Through experience, when I receive a prod like that from the Lord, I know my learning curve is about to be challenged 🤔. As I have prayed and meditated on it, it’s turned into my next share.
The presence of the Holy Spirit wasn’t lost on me during either of those meetings, but at the second one, I put my insecurities before Him – not in the sense of giving them to Him, but I blocked Him. During prayer that day, I wasn’t allowing the Spirit to work in me or move through me. Instead, I was focused on my own goal and failing at it when I should have been with the Spirit, lifting our requests up to the Lord. Which I equate to trying to dig a hole in the hard Arizona ground with my hands when there’s a running, gassed up backhoe with a key in it available 🚜🔑!
It wasn’t something I meant to do but it’s in my nature and I’m learning – being taught, really – to recognize it 👀.
“What I don’t understand about myself is that I decide one way,
but then I act another, doing things I absolutely despise.”
Romans 7:15, The Message
Geez, that’s a rough verse! It gives me a gut punch often. Can you relate?
My starting point was to find out what our tears are exactly because…I don’t know. Out of way too many online choices for explanation, I like this one Facts About Tears – California Eye Specialists. Wow, the DNA of our tears has a lot in common with many kingdom elements taught in scripture. You would almost think it uncanny 😜 – if not for God.
It’s remarkably similar with mucus aka snot Facts About Mucus: 8 Facts You Might Not Have Known About Snot (nysinuscenter.com). And here’s how snot got its name snot | Etymology, origin and meaning of snot by etymonline.
Here is a fabulous explanation for who the Holy Spirit is Who is the Holy Spirit? | GotQuestions.org.
Just from reading those references, it sounds like tears and snot can play a huge part in letting the spirit flow through us.
“He gets angry once in a while, but across a lifetime
there is only love. The nights of crying your eyes out
give way to days of laughter.”
Psalm 30:4, The Message
King David shared his tears with us through his writings in Psalms. For example, when he discovered that his wives and children and those of his men had been “taken captive,” he “and the people who were with him raised their voices and wept until they had no more strength to weep” (1 Samuel 30:1-4). But then David “strengthened himself in the LORD his God.” He knew who to turn to in his distress (Psalm 18). In turn, the Lord was with David and gave him victory over the Amalekites (1 Samuel 30: 16-17).
In a Robinhood like manner, David recovered all that had been taken from him and from his people, plus all the loot from their defeated foe (1 Samuel 30:18-20) 🤑. Then, he divvied it all out among his men, friends, and some elders in cities that had supported him (1 Samuel 30:21-31).
By crying out to the Lord in their distress, King David and his men were able to engage their strength in the Lord, and then they blessed many along the way – while planting kingdom seeds.
Scripture is chockful of tears and crying out to God. So, it’s silly for me or anyone to feel like a failure for crying. Our tears anoint our pain and anguish as they are lifted to Abba who will one day wipe them all away. It’s like the ripple effect of a drop of water – our tears rumple the ripple until we’re into smooth water.
“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes,
and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning,
nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”
Revelation 21:4
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