Last week I cried four times in one day.
Once in pain and frustration with God, once in feeling the Spirit as I prayed over a friend, once when I was texting Alex and missing the people who feel like home to me, once in awe of bravery when a teammate boldly shared her heart.
I didn’t even realize it until I was laying in bed to sleep that night. I thought about the day. It’d been heavy, but not bad. Four times seemed a little outrageous, even for me. Even for me on the World Race.
“Maybe I’m being a bit hyper-emotional,” I thought, but I took it back when I remembered the tears–all real, legitimate tears. Some happy, some sad, some painful, some overwhelmed, some empathetic. I started to wonder how often most people cry, how often my friends cry. Naturally, I decided I’d conduct a personal research poll and start asking around. I did some thorough investigation with my most analytical statistical tool (Facebook messenger, of course).
Well, my research returned some interesting results, although not all too surprising. Not very many people cry every day. All the men I asked said wild answers like, “twice a year.” Most of the women, even my closest friends, averaged 1-2 times a month.
Seems alright, until you remember that I cry almost every day.
I started to wonder if I’m too open-hearted, if I’m dramatic, if I’m ridiculous.
But then I remembered a way different feeling I’d had not too long ago at all, during the first couple of months of the race.
I’d felt numb to the things around me. I’d seen brokenness, injustice, poverty, true joy even, and I’d acknowledged it. I’d taken action toward it. But it didn’t break me, it didn’t fill me, it didn’t affect me. I didn’t feel it. I started to wonder why I wasn’t feeling more, started to realize it was a problem. God created emotions, and he feels them all at once. Every emotion, every instant. Then again, God is separated from our human concept of time, so it doesn’t really matter what instant he feels them in.
That’s wild to me. It sounds exhausting until you remember that he’s God. That he created us to feel, that he feels with us. When I realized how numb I felt, I realized how much I’d shut down emotionally to protect myself- out of fear.
Well, I’d rather step into things that scare me than live in fear, so I started to ask God to give me depth of emotion, to break me for what breaks him, to give me peaks as high as the mountains he created and hurt as true as what Jesus felt on the cross.
It’s not an easy prayer to pray, but I think it’s what He asks of us- what He’s planned for us.
6 months ago, I prayed that prayer.
And now, I cry every day.
Hyper-emotional? Maybe. Dramatic? Hardly. Ridiculous? Well, God is, so probably.
Open-hearted? I’ll take it, if it’s the father’s heart.
I think God cries every day, too.
