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| Psalm
6.6 (NIV) I am worn from groaning; all night long I flood my bed with weeping and drench my couch with tears. |
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| I push pain away all day, and the moment I put my arms down it walks into me and has a seat.* |
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What makes us weep? What can
make us cry ourselves to sleep? I have cried
tears of frustration over my children. Bitter tears accompanied the implosion
of my first marriage. Twice I have lost a job that I loved and I cried buckets
of tears. Oh, and my poor broken heart - in 9th grade and again in college - produced an ocean’s worth of salt water. My tears at funerals have mostly been
for myself and for my loss. I recently attended the funeral of a young mother
of three who died hours after giving birth to her fourth child. I cried then
for her children and her husband and her mother but not for her – she went to
be with her Savior.
David’s tears as described in this Psalm may have been
from shame or for repentance, but mine generally spring from two shallow wells
in equal measure: 1) I didn’t get my way; and 2) I don’t trust God enough. But whether
our tears flow from deep sources or shallow ones, God cares about our pain.
I work
through my heartaches by writing my prayers – journaling, as some call it. I
love the Psalms of David because they remind me of my prayers. As another writer observed, “David’s
rigorous honesty reveals that journaling is a place to pour out our anguish,
think the unthinkable, and presume to know what’s best. In the safe haven of
being able to make such outlandish statements, we stumble across our true
motives, feelings, and desires.”*
Yes, David had some serious issues to deal with – but sometimes he was shallow like me, wanting his own way and forgetting to trust God. And perhaps as David and I “stumble across our true motives,” we are actually being led by God to the very place he wanted us to go.
The further removed
we are from our pain, the less it hurts, and that healing is a good thing. But
hold on to the lessons you have learned through your pain so that your
suffering will not have been for nothing.
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| From bitter pain may come great promise, if that pain leads you to God.* |
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