Fresh Tears

"There is a sacredness in tears... They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are messengers of overwhelming grief...and unspeakable love.” {Washington Irving}

I've cried a lot (at least more than what is usual for me) the last few days. The tears started coming as I talked with my mom about the state of my heart one evening, then a single tear came down my cheek as I sat in the chair at the dentist's with a baking soda concoction flying all over my face as it missed my mouth (and for some reason, I had no shame in that tear, nor could I find any reason to offer an apology). I cried in the car on the way to pick up my friend from the airport, and while walking around the track behind my house in an attempt to process why these tears were coming so easily and without warning.

I'm not sure if this rare surplus of tears is in response to the end of an old season or the beginning of something new. Maybe they are taking me both thru an exit door and leading me to an entrance. I was hoping they would become a balm to a place in my heart that has become increasingly achy, yet they just keep making it feel worse. Usually I associate an achy heart with the temporary pain of unrequited love, with my strategy to relieve the ache being a gritting of the teeth and a picking up of speed in an attempt to keep moving forward.

How many more times will my teeth be okay with my clenched, stubborn jaw? Will moving on ever be the wrong action? Maybe sometimes it's okay to stay, to risk, to let love have the fighting chance that all those romantics speak of so fondly. But with all my processing, I usually leave with a "give me time" that is heard as I've already made my retreat into a place of sorting life out, and return to find that it's too late to say, "ok, let's take the risk." I don't move fast enough before people move on, taking too long and caring too much about making sure nothing can further hurt me, but instead I just feel that rejected abandonment all over again.

Aye my tears, what do I do with you? Maybe slide you into a nicely decorated bottle and drive east so that I can quickly throw you into the Atlantic, and then drive home and move on into the next season. Or maybe it's just one of those things where I have to let God catch them like He promised, trusting that He knows the plan better than my heart can understand, and that when I am found in His love, I'm never alone.

I think that regardless of what the tears may mean or what they are trying to say, they've been wanting to come for a long time without me allowing them the freedom to do so. I'll let them be the eloquent messengers of both grief and love for as long as they need.

“Perhaps our eyes need to be washed by our tears once in a while, so that we can see Life with a clearer view again.” {Alex Tan}