Cry Me a River

It is five o’clock on a Tuesday night, and I am sitting on my bed, staring at a half-painted wall. As it stares back at me, all I can think to myself is how accomplished I will feel when it is done. I would be painting right now but sadly the paint can is completely painted shut from my last attempt at finishing this project. We have tried everything…hot water, crow bar, random objects in my Dad’s toolbox, and the dumb thing won’t budge. It is stubborn. Honestly, these aren’t your typical old school pry-open containers. These are newer, twist off, and sadly are much tougher to deal with. It feels like trying to open a pickle jar with Crisco on your hands…and I am beat after several fatal attempts to get it to move.

Today was a hard day. I woke up, jumped out of bed, and rushed downstairs to get in a quick workout before the day began. The odd thing was as I leapt out of my comforter, I wasn’t greeted with my usual boost of joy and excitement for the day. I instead, most likely a byproduct of my restless evening, found myself dreading the thought of what was to come after my workout.

Last night…I cried. I cried. I didn’t sob, nor weep, but I cried, and the worst part was that it was face to face (at least thanks to technology) with my boyfriend. Since I was a kid, the whole “no crying in baseball” mentality really stuck with me. I would do my best to push aside my tears until I was by myself in my room later on, where I could let it out alone. When my family suffered some tough situations in my teens, I defaulted to unmoved instead of hurt. I tried my best to hold myself together by pretending things weren’t really happening to me. I suddenly became a bystander o the turmoil I was facing in my life.

As I looked on from the sideline, I would catch glimpses of others emotional responses to what I was supposed to be feeling. I would try and mimic their concern as best as I could, to at least show I wasn’t entirely detached, but still often failed to let people see what I was really facing. Well this afternoon was a pretty darn slap of reality that by bottling up my emotions…they will explode. I laid down on my bed today to take a nap and suddenly began to sob…really sob. One of those cries that punches you to the gut and makes your legs curl up towards your chest.

I laid there for a moment…and then realized all that I was experiencing.

A few weeks ago at church I asked the Lord to break me. I told Him that I truly wanted the line “break my heart for what breaks yours” to be true in my life. Well…He delivered. I started going through my days finding things that would devastate me. They were always a little rare, as though each thing had nothing to do with the other, but still made me feel sad for what I was witnessing.

Allowing yourself to experience things is crucial to not letting pent up emotion spill into other areas of your life. For me, certain things I was holding to myself started to build up to the point of coming out in my sarcasm with others. My boyfriend got to witness the joy of this first hand, and as it came out I was shocked as to the hold this specific insecurity was having on my heart…and now my mouth. To make matters worse, as embarrassed as I felt, it didn’t even compare to the feeling of failure I was clinging to. I don’t deserve the man that I get to be with by any means, but to actually understand that someone cares for me through my flaws…that feeling alone scares me to death!

He was patient, as he always is, and we talked through things but at the end of the night my heart was unsettled. I felt like I had unraveled. It was as though my “perfect image” was completely trashed. Oddly enough (or should I say perfectly), my prayer two evenings ago was that in breaking my heart, the Lord would humble me to finding my worth and confidence entirely in Him and Him alone. Well…let me tell you, it is working.

I am imperfect. I understand this of course, but then again if I truly understood I think I would live my life…and my relationship…out entirely differently. We are still in the beginning, during the time where your downfalls are “cute”, but as we grow together something tells me that the cute factor will one day start to lose its impact. That is the beauty of relationships. The point isn’t to find one another’s flaws adorable…it is to work through them and love beyond the weaknesses that we have. It is never to overlook them, or pretend that they don’t exist…the minute you do that you are going to have the whole bottling cycle engaged, and we all know how that ends.

So here I am, post “nap time” for the day. Sitting here with words to share and yet no clue how to communicate them. Let’s start with the paint can. That can has sat in my closet for over a year and a half. No one has touched it, opened it, or even tried to move it. I am the paint can. Then here comes an incredible man of God to come and gently and patiently work towards opening the can up. The problem is that it doesn’t take a quick fix. I can’t just expect my can to pry open with one small twist. It takes time. It also takes calling upon the right strength.

After several attempts, my mom and I decided to wait for my Dad to get home. We know that he has the right amount of strength to open the can in its time. Similarly, I have to be proactive in calling upon the Lord to loosening the can up through daily opportunities (such as this) to learning how to open. I have to be willing to let people in, and for a girl who is rather honest…vulnerability tends to be a strong downfall of mine.

Next, I’d tell you that crying is beautiful. It is real, honest, and true to what you are facing. This doesn’t mean that you should cry 24/7 to really “experience” things. It also doesn’t mean that you should judge how engaged you are in a situation by your tears (I’ve done that before too). It means that when you want to cry…cry. It may be odd, embarrassing, uncomfortable, but it is an emotion and just as I would pray and hope your joy is real and true when you are displaying it…so should your sorrow be.

Last, I’d share that you in turn need to allow your sorrow to have appropriate response time. Sometimes we get so caught up in the sadness of a situation, we forget that we are free and alive in the Lord and now have the ability to work through that sorrow and glorify the Lord in responding to it however that may be. For me…it means letting go of the fear that I will be rejected each time I cry. It means learning to share things with people before I end up a blubbering mess and they can’t understand me. It also gives me a way to release what is going on in my life without letting it affect areas that it has no place in being.

I am so tired of associating tears with weakness. I even cried last week because I was so happy! I am frustrated by the common idea that we have to remain strong, or that crying is overrated, or that it is “dramatic”. The truth is drama is drama but tears are emotion, heartfelt, and something that reveals that there is more going on beneath the surface. I think that a woman is truly beautiful when she is honest with her heart. That isn’t to say that she has to cry to have one, it just means that you can really tell that her expression is genuine an a reflection of what she truly fears.

So there you have it…

I guess I really do think you should, “Go cry me a river!” ;)

Love,

Kendra