John 11:35: "Jesus wept!"
The shortest verse in the Bible, yet profoundly moving in lowliness of heart.
He knew the circumstances surrounding the death of Lazarus, yet He wept. He wept with love in His heart, which let all humankind know that He truly cares.
Growing up as a child, I was taught not to cry, not to feel, and pretty much not to share or show any emotion that ridiculed my family or me. I had learned and taught myself to suppress my tears and show no emotion when life hurt.
I grew up with a father who would discipline me as a child, and when I cried, I would get hit more until I stopped crying. I became emotionless, and anger was my way of expressing myself. I turned to anger and alcohol to deal with all the hidden tears within my being. I knew that to feel was to lose and be humiliated.
During so many times in this life, I should have been crying-yet there was nothing but numbness in my soul. I drank to hide the pain. Plenty of times I cried while drinking, but it amounted to nothing, because I could not seem to find healing in my life. I dwelt in a life of self-pity, grandiosity, and a hardened heart, that did not know if love was coming in or out of me.
I still withheld the tears. Like the time I got the news that my little brother was not going to survive after a car accident. Or after a heartbreak with my ex-wife that left me to trust nobody. I had hidden tears that stopped the flow of love and had a hardened heart that kept me out of a true relationship with Jesus Christ or anybody else who the Lord had put in my life.
I know rejection and humiliation have wounded me the most, yet my pride and self-sufficient determination have led to a harder heart and a deeper wound that only God could fix. I am who I am in Jesus Christ, and in John 11:4 and 14, Jesus said, "This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God's glory, so that God's Son may be glorified through it . . . Lazarus is dead, and for your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him."
I know the sorrows of hidden tears have caused me to trust nobody, blame others, dwell in arrogance and self-pity, to mask the emotional pain going on within me. The flow of love was blocked due to my emotional incapacity to feel, and years of hiding the pain had thickened the wall I set around my heart.
I now understand the realities of having an emotional life, for to feel is to be born of the breath of God. He breathed his spirit into every man and woman, that they may have life and grow to feel. As he felt and cried that day for his friend Lazarus.
Through the love of God, I came to an acceptance of what I really am within and shared my deepest hurts with my heavenly father. He knows every hurt and sorrow, understanding that the pains of life can only be overcome with His grace, and that the gift of tears is part of His grace. For through the tears, burdens are lifted, realities are accepted, hearts are preserved, and love is growing beyond a hard and cruel world.
Seeing the tears of Jesus Christ has taught me to be real with myself and to grieve the heartaches in my life. Journaling and talking about the traumas that have been deeply hidden within my soul have also helped. I am yet a growing child in my emotional being, but by the grace of God, I am learning to feel again and overcoming the coldness of a hardened heart.
As the story of Lazarus shows in John 11, Jesus was moved in the Spirit, through the tears of Lazarus's friends and family. He wept himself, knowing in human nature, the helpless and dark pain of a broken heart. He was anguished in the moment. But I feel his tears were the release of power through the Holy Spirit, to give life and healing to the dead body of Lazarus.
Tears are liquid prayer that show that miracles are performed through acts of compassion-compassion that says, "Take off the grave clothes and let him go . . . Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?"
The power that is now exerted through the gift of tears is that I may honor God at an intimate level, crying out to him in my pains of life. Tears of a hidden past. Will I let them cut me to the deepest depths of my soul? Reliving a past that this child has forgotten to grieve? Owning every bit of hurt, crying unto the Lord, for his yoke is easy and his burden is light.
Though a mess I may be, shame will be lifted, acceptance creating a resurrecting power, healing yet another broken heart.
"My sacrifice O God, is a broken spirit. A broken and contrite heart, You, God, will not despise." (Psalm 51:17)
