Resolved.... not for the faint.

Rejoice with those who rejoice,

weep with those who weep.

Romans 12:15

Again - it takes a combination of circumstances to bring about change. Or, sometimes circumstances mingled with good reading, and soul food....

That I have a stronghold of emotional boundaries may not seem evident on first glance - but they are there. For far, far too long I have been resolved to maintain dry eyes. I have never thought crying to be a weakness - in others - but have not given myself license to cry overly much in ten years, I assure you.

I started crying (correction - my eyes glistened) nearly every week at both my Beth Moore Bible study, and also during the summer, when I led a Don't Waste Your Life study with some girlfriends. Drove me nuts - these tears, involuntarily dripping out of my eyesockets. Unwarranted, unneccessary, humiliating. To top it off, Dear Susan insists on Hugging nearly every time I see her. She KNOWS I don't want to be touched. And the walls come down.... brick by brick... and with it a new resolve. As much as it is within me (God - reveal these people to me!!!!) I want to rejoice daily with someone, and mourn daily with someone.... To cry, to weep, to laugh; to remain no longer unaffected by the hurts, and needs, and joys of others. To not try to have it all together emotionally. Ravenhill says that "Our eyes are dry, because our hearts are dry." I suspect he is right.

I find myself apathetic much of the time to the eternality of life. That most of those around me do not know Christ, and are headed down the path of destruction oftentimes does not phase me. God forbid that I feel so little any longer!

I have steeled myself against tears, and am learning to let them loose - for there is something so intrinsic about the connection between the dry eyes and hearts - I have managed, for the sake of the former, to create a mild desert in the latter.....

I have had to really let go to be able to weep with the Piper family, and the loss of little Felicity. To not hold back the grief I feel on their behalf. And I cried yesterday, as I began to read chapter two of Suffering and the Sovereignty of God. Mark Talbot quotes from Elie Wiesel's Night - of his first night in a Nazi concentration camp as an adolescent. This is not for the weak....

"
....Not far from us, flames, huge flames, were rising from a ditch. Something was being burned there. A truck drew close and unloaded its hold: small children. Babies! Yes, I did see this, with my own eyes... children thrown into the flames....." and from the footnote to the 2006 edition: "I did not say [in Night] that they were alive, but that was what I thought. But then I convinced myself; no, they were dead, otherwise I surely would have lost my mind. And yet fellow inmates also saw them, they were alive when they were thrown into the flames. Historians.... confirmed it."

I thought about my own little ones, tucked in their beds across the hall as I read this. I thought about the violence of such a death for them.... I thought about the families that got torn apart in these camps, about the survivors, who lived the rest of their lives with these memories. I thought about my cushy life in comparison - about a bad day being one where Trinity has a cough. Oh God! Soften my heart!!!! This empathy does not seem to be anything I can manufacture within myself - and so I beg of the Lord yet another tough prayer - let me not walk by the hurts! Let me not live my life oblivious to the pain around me! Let me not waste another day, fulfilling my own selfish desires, when so many need the Lord's presence! May the tears flow freely....

We want to hide ourselves from pain, do we not? To protect our hearts from the depths of sadness that others are experiencing. To steel ourselves against the "inhumanity" of mankind. I encourage you, dig deeper. Laugh with those who laugh, mourn with those who mourn. Be knit to the souls of those lives you touch, and bless them with a heart that exudes the compassion from above.