Counting My Tears

We unloaded the truck at 9:30 on Tuesday night. Home.

The days followed with mixed emotions until I crashed this last weekend. Hard.

I lay in bed for almost three days with aches and pains all over my body, following a terrible stomach virus.

I hurt all over. And it seems impossible not to lie in bed and think things. Run them over and over through your head. Trying to make sense of what some people call an “adventure.”

I called it that once. Or twice. I think we were in the first few steps. But soon my feet wobbled. So did my heart. And the tears came. Like a flood. A storm.

I’ve been thinking that perhaps I should rename my blog “Coping in Kansas” and leave it alone. So much of the difficulty from this last year is recorded here. Yet, there are also unpublished blogs, texts saved in my phone, and memories of conversations over frozen margaritas. So much more than what stands on the screen. I forget that sometimes.

I forget the in-between. The tears not seen through a screen. The miles driven back home. The sighs and the breaths taken each day that I pull into the parking lot for my new job. I come over a hill and there it is—the entire mountain range.

Sometimes I fight back another tear.

I find it difficult to love again. To not fear. To have hope that the church will stop being so unfaithful and self-centered.

I’m weary of the tears at unexpected moments. I’m tired from the aches resting in my shoulders.

Worn out.

Last night a friend prayed with me and read Scripture over the phone. I don’t know what passage she read or what version but I remembered words about “what can man do to me?” so I searched today and came up with these words in a similar passage:

You’ve kept track of my every toss and turn through the sleepless nights,
Each tear entered in your ledger, each ache written in your book. (Psalm 56:8, The Message)

When I am speechless, He gives me the words. He is the One who counts my tears. He counts them because He is there with me for each one.

And there will come a day when there are no more tears.

For now, I keep driving up my hill to work and looking over it. To see what I find there.