Sunday, April 29, 2012

i'm one of them

“Only tears know how to remind us we all break the same.” -Mutemath

Lots of tears have been shed over the past month and a half. Many of them have been sad tears. Some of them have been happy tears. Other times, they’ve been healing tears. But really, I have just been crying a lot. 

I realized just how much I had been crying when a couple of Sundays ago, I was sitting in church and listening to the message and felt the ducts in my eyes filling up. And normally I would have tried my best to push them back and fight to keep a straight face, but this time I just let the tears come freely. And the people around me had no idea why, but I did it anyway, not quieting my sniffles and not stifling my emotions. 

This is something new to me. I am used to crying when things get really bad. And that’s about it. Up until a few weeks ago, I apologized for crying in front of others. I didn’t want to burden others with my emotions and I didn’t want people to see me as an over-emotional feeler. 
Now I really just don’t care. I just don’t. It’s interesting how it changed in me. It seemed like one day I cared, and one day I didn’t, but I know that’s not how it worked. I just got tired of trying to hide it one day. I just got sick of holding in the tears one more time. I realized I'm broken just like everyone else.

And you know, there’s a lot of freedom when you just don’t care.  

I was thinking today about one of my favorite verses - “it is for freedom that Christ has set us free.” And it’s interesting that it’s not that Jesus set us free from bondage – although he certainly does. But his motivation behind what he did was all about what we would receive and not what we wouldn’t have anymore. 

I’m receiving relief from others’ expectations. I’m receiving release from bottling things inside. I'm receiving peace in knowing I'm broken, because it's OK, because being broken's not what it's about. Freedom cancels it out.

No comments:

Post a Comment