The First Tears

Recently I have been reflecting on how so many of the problems I see myself and the people around me struggling with are aggravated by the personal commitment to not cry in front of people.


The general philosophy towards pain people have adopted seems to be one of avoidance:

• We would rather escape our pain then walk through it.

• We choose keep our pain buried inside instead of bringing it to the surface

• We have been hurt in relationship, but we keep smiling and pretend that we are unaffected.

and it is this commitment to an independent, untouchable façade that allows us to die inside without anyone knowing.

I am rejecting the ticket. I will not ride this train. Though I don’t fall apart crying in front of the whole world, I have made a conscious decision to be real and broken with Jesus and with my friends because I believe honesty is setting me free.

This past week I have been considering how I came to the belief that it is okay to cry. It is a long story, a too common story, a story that is still unfolding, but to me it is a story filled with glimmers of a beautiful healing I groan for. I hope you see it too:

The First Tears

In third grade I realized my family was broken and that we would never be perfect on the same night.

It was horrible.

When I think back to that night the picture that comes is in freeze frame and I am able to recall every painful detail:

I was curled up on the bottom bunk of Bubba Chisholm’s bed secretly snacking on cookies while reading a missionary novel loaned to me by his sister Michelle in the room I shared with my Mom and 3 younger brothers.

It was two weeks since my father’s anger had provoked mom to pack up and leave with John, Andrew, baby Peter, and me; and for two weeks we kids had lived in a kind of Limbo. When we left, we hadn’t known where we were going. In the beginning I’m not sure Mom did herself. Just away.

She seemed as disoriented as the rest of us when our family’s white station wagon took us 1400 miles away--- from Salt Lake City, Utah to Champaign, IL; where Mom’s best friend, Frannie Chisholm, lived. She was driving confused. I was living confused…

Since leaving Utah questions had tumbled relentlessly in my 9 year old mind:

• Why did we need to leave Dad?
• Did Mom not know that that whole thing was my fault?
• Were we really here because I hadn’t cleaned my room fast enough?
• Would my parents ever stop fighting?
• Would they get divorced?

In the tension of the unknown the cookies were solace---the missionary novel, escape. When both were gone—I found myself alone with the painful questions. There the answer dawned on me, “As long as my parents live together they will be unhappy,” and some dark place in my heart whispered, “it would be easier if they just got divorced.” I realized then that I was longing for an end, for surrender. I wanted my family to give up trying to squeeze all our pain into one home. Peace at all costs was my prayer.

Of course I hated myself when I realized how I hoped that my parents would “get a divorce and stop fighting.”I dreamed of it, and felt so ashamed because I knew that a good daughter would try to bring her parents back together

like Sharon and Susan in the Parent trap. You know---

“let’s get together. Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

But unlike that precocious twosome I had no inner conviction that the problems in my parent’s marriage would go away if they merely realized that they really loved each other.

I felt just awful:

1. Awful that I had not cleaned my room fast enough and my dad had had to punish me.
2. Awful that my punishment had been a catalyst for leaving.
3. Awful that I had not even tried to convince Mom to stay.
4. Awful that I secretly wished for peace at the cost of my parent’s marriage.

I had never wished for anything as dark as divorce before. At nine years old I feared for my soul. I covered my face with my blanket and began to pray, tears streaming down my cheeks,

“God do you see me? I am so sorry. Do you see how I am crying? Please help me. I have never been so sorry. Would you heal my family? Fix us. Bring us back to Dad. Help Dad and Mom stop fighting. God save me. Don’t let me go to hell for the black thoughts inside my heart.”

I cried all my tears that night. I had no tears for the difficult years that followed. No tears for my grandmother’s funeral. No tears for me. I cried rarely, briefly and not about anything that really mattered. I felt empty, disconnected from hurt… numb. Nothing could touch me.

When with puberty the tears returned, I welcomed them [hormones are good for one thing.] Pain upon pain had been piling up through my girlhood had become a lump in stomach and a flood in heart. The day I entered middle school the emotions that had been submerged, hidden from me for years, found their way to the surface. The floodgates of tears re-opened with frightening consequences.

Dieting, cutting, burning, binging, purging… anything to release the pain.

The pain would well up in my heart when I was still and alone, waves of tears deep enough to drowned in. No one but God to call to for help.

Faith was the surprising upside of the emotional hurricane of my teens. I found myself too broken to connect with my peers so I clung to God. Sin made me desperate as it had when I was a girl.. Countless nights I lay awake whispering “Lord have mercy on me a sinner.”

And He did.

God has brought that girl, who is me, a long way toward healing. He has never condemned me through the numerous nights where I was Eve expelled from Eden, crying “Mea culpa, Mea culpa, Mea Maxima Culpa [my fault, my fault, my most grievous fault]" and refusing to be comforted by lofty thoughts of love, grace, and forgiveness.

Recently as I have continued to stumble towards belief in grace I have wondered then how Eve felt in the years after she was expelled from the garden.

What surfaced in the mingling of relief over not being obliterated from the face of the planet and the joy of becoming a mother---with a tragic disconnection from God and the pain of losing her home and then her son:

Did she feel crippled by her own guilt?

Did she cry until there were no more tears when she realized things would never be perfect again?

Did she hate her body, her appetite, how quick she had been to trust the voice of her enemy?

Did she blame herself for Able’s demise and wish she had died instead?

How human her story is. How like my own. God reaches out to me and I walk away. I listen and trust in the lies. I choose disobedience and am filled with shame. I feel tied to this first woman… my tears flowing from the same river of pain as the first tears she shed. Humanity is broken and it is we did it to ourselves.

“My fault, my fault, my most grievous fault,”

This is a breaking.

But it’s real.

“God’s on His throne so we shouldn’t ever cry or complain,” is a lie which I have heard subtly preached through my own trite dismissals of others' suffering too many times to count. And it's a lie I've been fed as well-- "how you feel doesn't matter as long as you're living for God." It’s like Christians are afraid that if they ever mention their discontent, the dissonance between the lives they live and the way they long to live God will abandon them for being whinny, ungrateful children.

But for me tears are the first step to grace. I complain about my brokenness. I stumble towards faith in the desperate whispered prayer “God you know how hard this is for my heart to grasp. Only You can change me. Only truth can turn my mourning into dancing.”
As I groan in pain --- pouring out my shame before God-- the Spirit has have baptized my hurting heart over and over in the truth of Romans 8,

Sarah know that the whole creation has been groaning together with labor pains until now.

And not only that,
but you who have the Spirit as the firstfruits —

you also groan within yourself,

eagerly waiting for adoption, the redemption of your body.
Now in this hope you were saved,
[yet hope that is seen is not hope, because who hopes for what he sees? But if you hope for what you do not see, you eagerly wait for it with patience.]

In the same way
the I also join to help in your weakness,
[because you do not know what to pray for as you should, but]
the I intercede for you with unspoken groanings.

And He who searches the hearts knows my mind-set,

because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God:

those who are called according to His purpose.

When this happens I close my eyes and cry… because this life hurts and I want to be with God so much. I cry because my heart remains so broken and I need more of Him. I cling to the words that He “works all things together for the good of those who love Him.” I say them over and over.

Then I am overwhelmed with this knowledge that Christ is with me, and He loves me. I feel that I am being held – safe and tight---

• I cry for the lost,
• I cry for the oppressed,
• I cry for the suffering.

I keep crying until there is relief and I am still…

Jesus is there in the tears. He isn’t repulsed by me. He isn’t overwhelmed by my grief. He is honored by the transparency. He is touched by the groanings of my heart. If there is anywhere in the world where I do not have to suppress my pain or pretend to possess a more righteous heart it is here.