Tears Producing Growth

As a little girl, one of the saddest sights I can recall was watching my parents cry. An image of strength and stability, I never knew how to react when these two "rocks" in my life felt too weak to hold it together. These moments weren't often but they left me with a painful feeling of desperation, knowing I could do nothing to remedy their heartache.

I've had my fair share of tearful moments, but in the last year I realize I had been responding to hard times less with tears and more with gritted teeth. I think a lot of this shift has to do with the fact that many of the frustrating experiences I've had in this season have occurred in solitude, when I was away and didn't have my community around to fall back on. I had been fighting tears rather than permitting them because I feared breaking down and being unable to pull myself back up.

My friend Kelli from Abilene, an amazing girl with an amazing mind, made the comment once that she believed tears were a spiritual gift, and while I always thought that was a beautiful idea, I never really could understand what she meant.

I think of my friend Peggy. Peggy is, with the exception of my mom, my Happy and my Auntie Em, the woman who I would like my life to most resemble. I can't count the number of times during my four years in Abilene that I dropped by Peggy and her husband James's house unannounced to steal a little time with these two amazing individuals. I enjoyed nothing more than to sit at Peggy's breakfast-room table or to lie in her hammock while catching up on the week.

Peggy has a beautifully sensitive spirit, and so many times during our chats I'd watch her eyes well up with tears as we talked. It didn't matter the topic of conversation, I never ceased to be impressed by this friend of mine who allowed the Spirit to affect her in such a way that she couldn't help but cry.

Maybe this is the response of which Kelli was speaking.

Since arriving in China, I find myself crying more often than is normal for me. Not a despairing sort of crying, but rather of acceptance and gratitude. I see now how backwards my mindset has been as I have found great healing in this action.

I've been working my way through the book of Esther in the last month, and I can't seem to make it through a chapter without finding myself on my knees, my face wet with tears. I receive e-mails from friends back home and my eyes well up, silently rejoicing over their existence. I walk through the streets of this city and become overwhelmed at the stories that surround me, stories of joy and of trials in the faces of people in my Chinese world. And all at once I am once again in tears.

The other night when I arrived at work, a Chinese co-worker came up to me and wiping remnants of mascara off my cheek asked, "Lauren, why is your face so dirty?" Apparently, I need to do a better job cleaning myself up.

The province of Guizhou is known for its rain. It rains a lot here, but yesterday as I was on a bus headed toward the countryside for an afternoon of bike riding with friends, I sat silently in amazement at how lush everything had become. The mountains here are vibrantly green and the strawberry fields stretch out for miles and miles.

I relished in thoughts of how God has set life into motion, how we have seasons and how the earth experiences drought and death and nurishment and life just like humans.

And I thought of what Don Miller said in one of his books about how he wants to keep his soul fertile so that things can keep getting born in him and so that they can die when it is time for them to die.

Perhaps tears, like rain to the dry earth, are the means by which we keep our souls fertile so that growth can at last take place. Perhaps this process really is more spiritual than we can understand.