Collecting the Tears

I read The Shack again last week. I read it several months ago but we had a book club meeting to discuss it and I wanted talking points. I enjoyed it the second time as I had the first, but noticed different details. I had wondered really the first time through if I would agree with the theology once I stopped enjoying the story and took the time to analyze if there was truth in it. This time I read with that intent and found places I agreed with, places I didn't. But could find no basis for all of the outcry and I have profound concern that we are fulfilling the message I took away from Masada all those years ago....'if the others would just realize if they leave us alone, we would destroy ourselves'. Why on earth would we worry about a book that makes people stop to consider the possibility that there is a loving God who wants us to know Him better? Or Her better. Or them better. Read the book, it will make more sense.

I was struck by several passages that eluded me the first time. The passage about Adam and Eve was very powerful as was the image of forgiveness being removing your hands from the offenders throat. I could identify with that. Still the one that has stayed with me is the depiction of Sarayu (the Holy Spirit) collecting our tears and then using them to grow a beautiful garden. It is very artsy and some would certainly say it is fluff to make us feel better about the misery in life. I hear that, and I guess if truth be told, I would say this myself, only recently I have shed a tear or two myself.

Now don't be jumping to any false conclusions like I am becoming all mushy and touchy/feely emotional pudding. This is not true. In fact, all that stuff creeps me out and makes me very ill at ease. Not your emotion, you understand. People seem to feel free to cry with me and I am never uncomfortable with that. I am dreadfully uncomfortable when I tear up. Actually uncomfortable is an understatement. So, imagine my astonishment and mortification when in the middle of worship, I found myself leaking from the eyeballs. I was good until we started singing. I remembered a dear friend who died recently singing the same song. I remember watching her face when we sang, 'sing has lost its power, death has lost its sting' and a few tears came. Those were dispatched and I was fine until the greeting time when someone asked me how my son was, how I was and those doggone tears came back. I pulled it together again when the sermon about healing sucker punched me. I sat next to my darling 11 year old who asked me what was up. I said my contacts were bugging me. He said the only time his eyes did that was when he was crying or drank a diet coke. I said I had also recently had a diet coke. We giggled some. Then prayer time followed, and I was out for the count. I don't know why I did that. I work there for pete's sake. I know the rules, no matter what you smile big, respond positively and remain gracious. I have been dealing with my eldest child's illness for 8 years long term and a week in the recent crisis. I have been calm and in control. Who knows what that was. Maybe hormones.

Then sometime in the evening, (after I had considered all the possible options in going into the witness protection program, transfering the a church to be named later or claiming I had an out of body experience), this picture of the Holy Spirit collecting these tears, carefully storing them and one day, at the appropriate time using them to bring about beautiful life in the midst of death. Ponder with me please if perhaps rather than being a feel good kind of message, this becomes the promise of redemption. That God who knows our name, who knew us in the womb, who has counted every hair on our heads, who had made plans for us, good plans that give us hope and a future, who wants us to have life abundantly, who promises nothing can ever seperate us from His love, does redeem the sadness, sickness and death in our lives and brings from it wonderous, beautiful, new life. What if tears are a sign of the promise instead of a show of weakness? It is worth considering, I think.

Today God and I discussed again Paul's message of being content in all things. I am practicing knowing that when it is obvious that things are too much for me, it is apparently not my job. That surrender means more than our will and our control. It means our beings including our emotions and it means knowing that we know that we know, God is good, God is present and if the two things seem to be in discord, it is because it is not finished yet. That's scriptural, you know. Funny how it always seems to come back to the same place.