Tears in a Bottle

I’ve never understood why Psalm 56:8 was in the Bible. The idea of God keeping all of my tears in a bottle never seemed all that exciting to me. It’s one of those poetic things that never really sank in---much like the idea that God can number the hairs on my head. I can’t even number the hairs I clean off my brush each day, but that’s besides the point. The point is I’ve cried a lot in the last 5 months, and I think I’m beginning to see why God views our tears as so precious. It’s easier for me to write this in third person, so bear with me.

She couldn’t see the screen anymore. It was late and the tiny font on her iPhone was hard to decipher. But she knew that it was bad. Even though she couldn’t understand all the medical mumbo-jumbo, every site that included the words “nephrotic syndrome” and “acute tubular necrosis” also included very scary predictors of what had happened to other people. It hadn’t sunk in that those words now described her, but the beeping of her monitors, the buzzing sounds of a hospital and the shooting pains coursing through her body now that the last shot of morphine had worn off were a reminder that this was serious. So she cried, tears of pure fear.

She buried her head in her hands a week later, reacting to the shock of her reflection. Her face and eyes were so swollen she looked like she had Downs Syndrome. There was so much water in her skin, everything hurt, everything was swollen. It didn’t seem like the medications were helping, v As she rocked back and forth, crying that she didn’t like who she was anymore, her mother cried too, tentatively rubbing the girl’s back, afraid to say that everything would be okay. They both knew that this, whatever it was, was hard. So they cried, because there didn’t seem to be anything else to do.

She tried to understand. People had visited, sent flowers, called, texted and wrote emails for the first month. Slowly the outpouring of love from friends and colleagues dwindled to a trickle. She tried to understand that other people had lives to live, things to do and jobs to take care of. She tried to understand without jealousy, without desperately wishing that she could be out of the wheelchair when she left the house, without desperately wishing that she felt good enough to leave the house. She was thankful for her family and the moments when people did contact her, but she didn’t really understand. So she cried.

She sat against the wall in her closet, long after diagnosis. She had collapsed after staying in the hot tub too long, pressing her face on the cool wood floor and refusing help to make it up the stairs. With each step, she faced a new demon, crawling at a snail’s pace, convinced that if she could just make it up the stairs, she’d be okay. Sitting on the floor, she knew that she wasn’t okay. It had been so very long, and she still wasn’t okay. At that point, after weeks of not sleeping, weeks of crawling up the stairs, she wasn’t sure she would ever be okay. So she cried.

Months passed. She got very good at blaming her tears on the medication. Sure, she cried watching music videos and reading textbooks, but the tears weren’t her fault. It was the medication. She held her breath for the results of every blood test, relieved when she didn’t relapse, but halfway hoping that something would show a miracle cure that would make her better tomorrow. Always tomorrow, because the daily pain reminded her that she still wasn’t okay. But when tomorrow brought more pain, more disappointment, she cried.

She got very good at finding glad moments in her days. Tutoring, seeing her Young Life girls, talking on the phone with a friend, adding a minute to her routine at physical therapy. Although any activity left her wasted, lying in bed trying to get her heart rate down, drinking fluids to replace those lost, she desperately needed those moments. She was good at convincing herself that one good moment each day made it okay. But then it would rush at her, all the things she missed because most of her days were spent recovering: the play one of her girls performed in, her niece’s 1st birthday, a long planned camping trip, her grandmother’s 75th birthday, graduation with the rest of her class, the last Young Life camp with her girls. So every once in a while, she cried, because life just seemed too hard.

She went to church one night with a childhood friend. She sang well known songs and listened to a familiar sounding sermon. But then, her childhood friend, who had been more consistent in her care and attention during the long illness than any others, despite their long separation, prayed. The girl felt the tears slide down her cheeks and hit her hand. She was overcome by a feeling of such peace, of such love. It was as if the hundreds of people around the world who had told her they were praying were standing there, as if the thousands of angels who watched over her daily were able to, for an instant, let themselves be seen. So she cried, because it was so beautiful to be so loved.

I can find such joy in the knowledge that my tears are precious. Not because there is something intrinsically good in tears, or because crying is cathartic or whatever people try to tell me. But because through every one of those moments that I re-lived as I typed my story out, I was not alone. From the moment I entered the hospital to the drive home from church tonight, I have not been alone in my battle with kidney disease. I’ve tried so desperately to justify to myself and others that there was a reason for my disease, a reason that all of this happened. Yes, it’s given me an empathy I’ve never felt, and yes, it’s opened doors in conversation that would have been previously closed, but those aren’t good enough reasons to keep me going on days like today, when it all seems so hard, so unfair.

But, friends, Jesus was there with me the whole time. He was the only one who was with me the whole time---the only one who has watched every flux in faith, every rollercoaster of emotions. Not only does He know my name, my every thought, but He knows my tears. I believe that Jesus not only wept when His friend Lazarus died, but He weeps when we weep. God didn’t give me this wretched situation, He walks with me, and gets close enough to me when I cry to capture my tears in a bottle.