"A silver tear appearing..."

“Hope…comes through our tears, as the soft summer rain,
To beautify, bless, and make joyful again.”
- Mary Baker Eddy

Dear Maria, in a recent comment, you gently asked if I would post something on “tears”…  Hmmm…. I can’t think of a subject I feel more experienced in addressing. 

If James Taylor songs, like song "Carolina in My Mind," it have been the soundtrack of my life…tears have been the environmental constant.  I must thrive, spiritually, in salt-water.  I have become so accustomed to the feeling of tears filling my eyes, running down my cheeks, pooling in my ears, and falling on my shirt that I have long, long, long since abandoned wearing mascara, buying silk shirts that show tell-tale salt stains or thinking that I could fool anyone into thinking that it was “just something in my eye”.

That said, I have also had a very special journey in making peace with my tears.  When I was younger I thought that my tears were a sign of weakness.  I thought that they made me appear fragile, vulnerable or emotionally out of control.  I tried to staunch them with inner grit and with a spiritual resolve to “not let anything get to me”…but, to little or no avail.  I cried when I was happy, sad, moved, hurt…I cried at movies, family reunions, arguments, Hallmark commercials and angry words.  I cried when I felt overwhelmed by life and I cried when life was good.  I cried when I needed rest and just wanted to exhaust my thoughts from spinning out of control.  I cried whenever I thought about those things that made me humbly grateful for the abundance of divine mercy, grace, wisdom or inspiration I was experiencing.  But still my tears somehow made me feel weak and vulnerable.

That was until one morning when my eldest daughter was about eighteen months old.  She had been up all night with a raging fever that would abate briefly…I would feel some modicum of peace, fall into an exhausted sleep, only to awaken suddenly to her disoriented thrashing or a listless incoherence. 

By morning I was on the verge of mother-madness.  I felt helpless and powerless to bring any sense of deep inner poise to bear on the moment, and hopelessness was seeping in around the edges of my spiritual fortress. 

As I sat there on the edge of my daughter’s little bed with my Bible in my lap, my tears welled up and spilled onto the page I had been reading from.  I was desperately grasping for something that would ground my prayers.  At one point I wiped my eyes and looked back to the page that was open in front of me.  I was stunned to see that the print was, quite literally, magnified by a large teardrop that had fallen onto the page and was still pooled on the paper.  These words, from 1st John:

“There is no fear in love…”

were larger because of my tears.  The teardrop had acted as a magnifying glass to emphasize the power of this statement.  I was stopped in my tracks in more ways than one. .  I knew...I was sure...no, I was absolutely certain about how much I loved my daughter…in fact up until that very moment, I thought that I was afraid because I loved my daughter.  But what the Word (the Bible) was saying, from underneath that teardrop, was that because I loved my daughter I was not afraid.  These two things were mutually exclusive.  I could not have both.  I could not love and be afraid…anymore than I could have light and darkness at the same time. 

My tears were NOT tears of fear at all…they were tears of great love.  I could reclaim them for God and recast my feelings in the light of that love…that all powerful, divinely bestowed affection that I could never have created myself, even in my most inspired moment. 

I was certain of what was true…I loved her…therefore I had to be certain that I wasn’t afraid…I had just misread the feeling.  I could correctly claim that feeling as one of humble gratitude for God’s presence in my life revealing itself as tenderness, loyalty, affection, and joy….immediately.  And I did. 

Hannah’s healing, like many others throughout her childhood came without incidence when I realized that the feelings that I had misinterpreted as fear…were really love…deep, humbling, unsettling, knee-buckling, trusting, heart-expanding love…the presence of God in my life.

This was also the end of my disquiet about my tears…or anyone else’s for that matter. 

I love my tears. I love to be moved.  I love to weep, to cry, to let the tears of feeling flow through and around and over me.  Washing away the cobwebs of intellectualism, letting the salt left in their wake, dry up the undefined uncertainties of “what if”, and magnify the power of “the Word” in my life with the experiential certainty of not having just known, but actually felt God move my heart to surrender all that it had left to give, in order to wash His feet in gratitude.

“Saw ye my Savior ?
Heard  ye the glad sound?
Felt ye the power of the Word?”
-Mary Baker Eddy

Mary Baker Eddy has taught me to associate my tears with the presence of God, with the presence of hope and faith…the “triune” of love.

K (and J)

Resonance

Emma and Clara were three month old twins who, when they were awake, cried....and cried...and cried.  I now know, in my heart, that they were crying for a mother's voice they remembered, and longed for, through long weeks in utero when the three of them, mother and daughters, were living in a quiet space of prayer and listening....Heidi talking to them, singing to them, loving them with all her heart wanting to make the very best choices for her beloved babies.  

But as their adoptive mother, I often didn't know what to do, to comfort them, once we brought them home from the sweet celebration where Heidi and her family placed the girls in our arms...for they were already deeply tucked into our hearts.  Dwight, Hannah (then a very, suddenly grown up eight year old) and I rocked, cradled, cooed, talked, sang and most of all prayed with them....and our efforts were received with affection, but rarely silence.    There were days when I felt like the crying, from outside of my head, was so loud (crying twins are louder than you can imagine) made it almost impossible to "hear" the still small voice within...to find that deep settled place of sacred silence, that sanctuary of the soul that gave me ground to stand on with spiritual poise.

I read everything I could...books, articles, postings on "mothers of multiples" websites...for ideas about how to respond to their unspoken hunger for something that would comfort this deep ache it was obvious they felt.  I tried everything and only found my peace in prayer one afternoon when reaching out to God for ideas, and being "told" that I too was His child and He would comfort us all...including their precious birthmother (for a fuller description of that afternoon see No more tears) and her family. Although this afternoon was a turning point in the girls being comforted, happy, and a deeper sense of peace descending upon our home, I felt as if something in me had shifted.

Somehow I felt as though I couldn't find my way back to that deep settled ground of stillness that I had navigated to so easily prior to their vigorous and resounding presence in our lives.  I would cover myself with quilts and make a space so silent that I was sure I would rediscover it (a method I had used early in my practice of meditative prayer that often left my family chuckling as they walked over a huddled mass of patchwork carefully positioned over the forced air heating vent on cold Colorado winter mornings), I would take long walks in the woods on our property late at night when the air was cold and the stars close enough to see them wink in collusion...but to no avail. 

One day their dad, aware that I loved cello music and had always seen myself as a cellist in some "past life" came home with an incredible gift.  He had gone out and rented a cello for six months so that I could explore its sounds and know the feel of its weight against my chest.  It was a Godsent messenger.  It became my spiritual tuning fork.  Once I had fed the girls and put them down for a nap each morning and afternoon, I would take out my cello and sit on a rush-seated ladderback wooden chair in our sunny, large kitchen overlooking the gardens on the estate where we lived,  close my eyes, take a deep breath and draw the bow across the strings of that amazing instrument.   Her tones would travel deep into my being and I would lean into her the way a child leans into her mother for comfort and assurance.  With her weight against my shoulder and her neck at my temple I would drink in the deep beauty of her sound until I could hear the still small voice of God's angels in her every breath. 

I didn't learn how to play any songs, or how to articulate a score accurately, but I did learn to draw that bow across her strings and find pure, clear tones that tuned my spiritual heart and silenced my disquiet.  I would move through scales and gently dance with her in my chair...swaying slightly against her body.  It was enough.

When the six month rental was over we returned her to the music store, but her voice stayed deep within me...I think much like Heidi's voice has stayed with Clara and Emma through the years and rises to conscious memory each week when she calls them to "touch base".  A call that makes me smile and swallow a small sob of gratitude each time I am present to see Clara's smile of recognition or Emma's twinkle of delight.  She is a precious abiding voice in their hearts.

This has been a year in which I have been the child crying for a voice I often could not reach.  I have turned to God, when being away from those I loved was so painful that I thought parts of my heart were shattered, and I have found much comfort in remembering that the same message from God that assured me that She was comforting the girls, me, Heidi, our families as her children then, was here to comfort us all now as adjustments were made and new chapters were unfolding.  But there were days when I still couldn't find the tone of that peace.

Yesterday afternoon my husband called to tell me that a dear friend had dropped off a gift for me at his office so that he could bring it home to me later that afternoon.  I couldn't imagine what it was.  But there, at the end of the day was my old friend (or at least a sister or a cousin). A used and well-loved old cello now sits in our sunroom waiting to fall into my arms, nestle against my chest, lean against my neck, place her cool hand upon my temple and breathe her tones into my heart with each pull of the bow.  Today, the depth of her voice will help me find my ground....that deep settled sanctuary of stillness.  Her voice, as familiar to me as the sound of my own heartbeat, will take me deeper and deeper into the space of prayerful meditation.  Like Emma and Clara I will smile in recognition and feel that "unspeakable peace that comes from an all-absorbing spiritual love" as Mary Baker Eddy encourages us to know.

God is good.  Thank you Michael. 



K