And The Dam Broke…

Have you ever lost a friendship in a moment and not get why?  Have you sat there asking yourself what did I do?  Why would X lead to this Y?  Have you ever had to say farewell to dreams that you had only begun to taste?  Have you ever had to help other people get to a destination you love knowing that you may never get there again?  I think to some extent we have all been through one or some of these things, maybe not to the extreme I am writing but we all have experienced a loss of friendship or dream in some form or fashion.  There is something uniquely painful about these two particular losses, there is  a sweet kind of love that friendships bring and refreshing hope that dreams do.  To say goodbye to either can cause tears to flow.Over the last two months as things have been stripped away from my life, things I cherish and hold onto with deep admiration and care, I have cried.  (if you have read the recent posts this is no big shocker)  Every time the tears would begin to flow I was shocked, but last night The Dam Broke.  Tears before flowed freely in a pretty stream down my face, last night they came in a sudden burst out of my eyes in one of those heaving, snotty, uncontrollable, ugly cries.  Mascara covered my hands and face.  As soon as I thought I was done another wave would crash through.  This went on for close to an hour and I hate crying, so I sat there sobbing I began to ask God, why so many tears?  Haven’t I already cried?

God being so sweet and faithful began to show me my stages of grieving and what the tears meant before and what they were meaning now.  In the beginning my tears were out of frustration, anger, confusion, disbelief and being simply hurt.  But they were merely stepping stones to lead me to this tumultuous cry of truly grieving the loss.  Nothing on this earth is a guarantee, there is no promise that every friendship will survive all the storms of life or every dream will fully come to fruition and to lose them is essentially to experience a death.  Last night my tears reflected that death.

For years everything in me told me not to cry.  Tears to me were a sign of weakness and that if you cried you might as well be giving up.  I am learning more and more each day how that is the furthest thing from the truth.  There is something powerful and healing in tears. Jesus wept (John 11:35) at the tomb of Lazarus when He had lost His friend, even foreknowing that He would see him again.  So if Jesus cried, even knowing He would soon be re-united with His friend, how much more should we cry for our lost friendships?  In Psalm 56 it talks about God keeping records of our tears, tears mean something to our Heavenly Father.  He doesn’t look down on us when we cry any more than a mom does on her young child.  He longs for our tears to draw us to Him.  He hopes that when we begin to cry that we would run to Him for comfort; not man, food, alcohol, sex, etc.  He longs to speak to us about the tears we have shed, to use them as a healing salve on our heart, soul and spirit.

I can’t say that the tears are fun or that I am done with them in this season but what I can say is that I am grateful that I am crying.  I am thankful that I have a Father in Heaven who hears my cries and is not bothered by them but moved with compassion by them.  I am grateful most of all for the new-found freedom I have come to find in my tears.