It happened yesterday afternoon. I was sitting in the office of the church where I currently serve as interim. Without warning the tears began to form. No wracking sobs, just quiet, almost unnoticed sadness.
Frederick Buechner writes: "Tears. You never know what may cause them. The sight of the Atlantic Ocean can do it, or a piece of music, or a face you've never seen before. A pair of somebody's old shoes can do it. Almost any movie made before the great sadness that came over the world after the Second World War, a horse cantering across a meadow, the high school basketball team running out onto the gym floor at the start of a game. You can never be sure. But of this you can be sure. Whenever you find tears in your eyes, especially unexpected tears, it is well to pay the closest attention. They are not only telling you something about the secret of who you are, but more often than not God is speaking to you through them of the mystery of where you have come from and is summoning you to where you should go next."
Where I've come from is a congregation that knows me, loves me, and who put up with me for 16 years. Where I am going next is becoming a new member of another branch of God's family. It reminds me of those early years of marriage when I began to know the family I had married into. They did things different. They talked different. They ate different. They worked different. Not bad. Just different. The same is true in this season.
The new family will become dear to me over time, but in the meantime, I miss my family.
3 comments:
I know they miss you too!
This same experience of unexpected tears happened to me at the women's retreat at Hume Lake last weekend. It was DEFINITELY God pointing me in a very specific direction, to get to know a divinely selected person for what I am sure will become a new phase in His purpose for my life. Not being one who cries easily, I've learned to pay very close attention to what is happening/who is speaking/where I am/why I'm there when the salty drops spill.
Thanks for being so transparent.
Jeanette
I was going to say that men are such odd creatures, that we seem to have very dualistic personalities. That something like tears can sneak up on us. But it looks like women do that as well. I wonder if Jeanette is speaking of a different type of experiece though.
I've gone through a long dark period of near dispair where God had shattered my dreams and knocked the snot out of my presuppositions about Him. It felt like I was left with nothing, and I couldn't understand why He would do such a thing.
I've got a couple years on that era now and I can say from my heart that God is good. I still mourn my dreams from time to time, alot like losing a loved one oddly enough, but doors have opened that never would have had I continued in my own way.
Both Jeanette and Peppini share this experience of hating where we are but, at the same time, loving that we are there with God. A big part of us have our "druthers" about our circumstances, but that Spirit-led part of us understands that there are things God wants to do with us, in us and through us that can only be accomplished by helping us jettison the dreams we so tightly clung to.
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