...tears...

Lent, Day 30

This one goes up late...
I could list a variety of reasons why I didn't post it right away, but the bottom line is still the same:
I didn't.  And now...I am a day off track...but I will make due with what I have left.

I have difficulty crying at the right times.

I cry in the heat of frustration...while watching a very moving scene in a movie...or, I am embarrassed to admit, at sappy commercials when my hormones decide to cry mutiny against me.  And, while these may not seem like odd times for the waterworks to turn on, it leaves me bewildered at myself when I don't have tears in the moments when they would seem most needed.  Moments like a daughter who is sobbing over heartache...the look of unshed water in the eyes of my husband as he holds her brings me to a point where I give comfort and love...but the tears just don't seem to come.

It makes me feel like I am bad...wrong...somehow emotionally disconnected in the very places I should be most plugged in.  I am a mom...and a rather over-emotional woman (if you take my husband's good natured word for it)...so why don't I cry in real moments like that???

This is something that has plagued my heart over the last week...probably a lot more than it should, but as no answers seemed to come, I found myself closing off a bit.  Regressing and pulling back into a shell of self-doubt and coldness...because I was believing the truth that said because I don't cry "right", I am not good enough.

Stupid, right?

Amazing what we believe in odd moments of vulnerability.

So last night...I sat on an over-stuffed couch, in the midst of six other amazing woman, bowed in prayer.  A devotion taken from the 23rd Psalm had just been read and the first lady was in the midst of her prayer when a soft whisper fluttered over my lap and up into my ears: "Come to Me...I give you rest." 

So real and so alive...I lost myself to her prayers as I just allowed that to play over and over again in my mind...until I realized it was my turn.  I opened my mouth and words poured out, lifting this sweet woman upwards...until it was time to pray for myself.  Again the whisper came: "I give you rest"...and I was undone.  Tears flowing non-stop, salty and warm, gushing forth from a heart long over-due them, pouring out from a riverbed full...and I knew that this was the right time to cry.

I realized that it doesn't matter when I cry but rather where I share my pain...and sometimes a mom has to hold back in order that others may feel free to fall apart, knowing that there will come the right time and the right place to give in.

For the women...the prayers...and the tears, I am so very thankful.

For more information about this celebration of Lent on the pad

and why there are no comments allowed,

click here to read the first post Lent, Day 0.

Looking up as always...
...bina...