The last few days have been sort of hard. I've felt pretty sad for a variety of reasons and most of them I couldn't even put my finger on. I realized last night I was grieving again when a picture of lilacs made me cry. Because we used to have a lilac bush. Back when we lived in our house with our beautiful yard. (Not beautiful because we took good care of it, mind you. I wouldn't want you to get the wrong idea. Our yard was fairly well neglected except for the requisite lawn mowing in the front yard.) But our yard was huge. And it was filled with all sorts of fabulous trees and bushes that fairly exploded in Spring.
And here I go crying again.
There have been some other emotional things going on around me this last weekend and finally I realized this morning I needed to stop stuffing the tears and just let them out. I think God helped me realize that in the middle of a season like this one, I don't have to feel any worse about crying from time to time than I do about sweating when it's hot or I'm exercising. Despair and discouragement are bad. Tears are not. Just because I need to cry does not mean something's wrong with me.
They that sow in tears will reap with songs of joy... Tears are sometimes seeds of joy. And I bet it's no coincidence that tomorrow night in our Life Group we're looking at the story of the woman who anointed Jesus' feet with precious perfume and with her tears. Maybe when I feel like crying I need to get to the feet of Jesus and just let my tears fall right there on Him. I know that at least today, it brought a lot of relief. Thank you Jesus for that.
Day 14 (of my blogging during Lent 2011)
