Weeping may endure for a night...

I just wept... again. Today the court increased Miracle's visitations to four nights per week with her birth family. Since we've started dealing with the possibility of Miracle returning to her birth family, I have displaced most of the top 10 weeping experiences of my life. The only ones even in the running are maybe a relationship rejection, a couple people falling away from God, and a dysfunctional marriage situation in God's Kingdom.

Weeping is different than crying. When you cry, you're pretty much still in control. Tears usually come to me for good reasons: an inspiring song, listening to Sean Wooten describe Jesus coming back, a moving communion, pride over my kids.

When I weep, I'm not in control. Sometimes I wail. Sometimes I'm silent and the pain is too great for sound. When I see my kids hurt themselves, there is a period of silence before the wails and tears come. The longer the silence, the more it hurt. I wonder how God experiences my silent weeping.

The shortest verse in the Bible is "Jesus wept" (John 11:35). Lazarus had just died and he had stayed away for a couple days so that Lazarus was buried, in order to maximize the glory given to God when he was resurrected. Jesus visited Bethany and saw a multitude of people weeping with Mary and Martha, the deceased's sisters. In Jewish culture, weeping over death had been raised to an art form and cultural experience.

After seeing both Mary & Martha in the throes of grief and the multitude of people sharing their pain, Jesus inquires about the tomb's location. In the brief dialogue that follows, Jesus weeps and then is deeply moved once more. I wonder how it came across. Respectful and empathetic for their feelings? In John 11:36-37, the Jews have two responses, "See how he loved him?" and "Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?" I wonder if Jesus wept at their spiritual condition. Or maybe he was just showing that he truly missed Lazarus.

Jesus was fully God and fully human and very much in touch with his emotions. Surely he handled them appropriately.

Weeping is cathartic. It releases the tension and emotional intensity that I feel. I often feel better just for having gotten it out. But I know it doesn't fix anything. I wonder if Jesus wept in the few days prior, or whether he had built-up tension that he had to release before he performed one of his greatest miracles?

The miracle certainly moved many people forward spiritually. "Jesus called in a loud voice, 'Lazarus, come out!' The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face. Jesus said to them, 'Take off the grave clothes and let him go.' Therefore many of the Jews who had come to visit Mary, and had seen what Jesus did, put their faith in him." (John 11:43-45) I wonder if Jesus' emotional vulnerability had anything to do with it? I should think I could trust someone with incredible power over the grave if I saw that person had real emotions.

I felt I was surrendered to God this morning, knowing the court date was today and that things could very well change. I was not surprised when Casey told me that the visitations had increased by a day. Nonetheless, it turns out I had plenty of feelings about it. I'm not going to get angry and hopefully my emotions won't keep me from performing my role as a husband, dad, or employee. But it would be disingenuous of me to claim that I can function perfectly fine without addressing this change.

One of the greatest things about the Bible is how it ends. In Rev. 21:3-4 God promises, "Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away."

There is hope for the future. Sometimes it feels like the wound will remain raw forever. It certainly takes emotional work and crying out to God to properly heal a deep wound. Tonight, I had no words to pray, but I started singing, "It's me, it's me, it's me O Lord, standing in the need of prayer" and before I knew it I was weeping. Jesus is the only physician who can really heal me.

One last promise about weeping is from the Old Testament. Ps. 30:5 states, "weeping may remain for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning." Things look dark at times, but with God I can always hope for light around the corner. The Psalms are filled with emotions as the people of God in the past wrestled with their emotions and fought to rejoice and give their hearts to God.

2 Cor 4:17 offers more perspective: "For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all." My troubles now seem insurmountable at times. Tomorrow I will have to take one day at a time. But in the future when I see the face of God and stare out into eternity, I trust that my past troubles really will dissolve and fade from my memory into nothingness.