When I said that I was going to cooperate with God's plan to tear down the little wall in my heart, I didn't expect Him to be so hard at work right away. After all, He does have a universe to manage: hurricaines are blowing, wars are raging, politicians are pursuing power. Besides all that, I assume that I am not the only saint struggling through this sanctification process. Nevertheless, Jesus keeps patiently pulling the stones down from my wall, one by one.Last night I was at my writers' group, and a dear woman shared the heart-wrenching story of how her seven year old grandson was killed in a boating accident at Riverview Bible Camp two summers ago. Again, I wanted to emotionally check out. After all, I had heard about the tragedy when it happened, this wasn't new to me. Again, God implored me to engage. By the end of the story, there was not a dry eye in the room. Me? I was sobbing and shaking and sniffing uncontrollably. My gut hurt. I wanted to scream. I hate pain. Long after the others had stopped crying, I was still trembling with a salt-water river pouring from my eyes. I didn't understand why my tears kept coming. A friend gently put her arm around me, which somehow let me know that I didn't have to stop. The grandmother who wrote the story looked at me with compassion. That sent me over the edge...it was her loss, but she had compassion on me???
Then she said, "Thank you for your tears."
Well no one has ever said that to me before. Probably because until now I pretty much only cried tears for myself. Pathetic. But this is what I am apart from Christ: a selfish, pathetic wretch. A wretch who does not feel so much pain, but one who is also missing out on the fullness of His love and the depth of His joy. I didn't realize that my tears could be a gift to another person.
Can I just say that this is hard?
As I walked to my car to head home to my empty house, I once again saw Jesus gently removing another stone from the wall I had built in my heart.
And why was I going home to an empty house? Because both of my boys and David were on an overnight class trip--at Riverview Bible Camp.
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