Guys, I haven’t even started writing and I’m already crying.
There’s this cliché (or maybe it’s a bible verse- sorry Jesus, I’ll read my bible more) that talks about God catching all of your tears. As if each tear is caught and stored away in a bucket. And if you know me, then we can both safely assume that my bucket is probably closer to the size of an Olympic swimming pool. I cry a lot. And I cry for just about anything.
And for the past week, I’ve cried every single day.
To paint a picture… I cried Thursday night when I was watching a Christmas movie and the little boy said he wished mom could come home even though she was deployed, and she surprised him and came home. I cried Friday morning on my way to watch the sunrise as I listened to Seasons in the car and the lyric “Then if you’re not done working, God I’m not done waiting” played. I cried Saturday when Karamo was celebrating Joe Biden’s victory and talking about how it is going to change how his daughter of color views herself and exists in this world. I cried twice on Sunday. Once in the morning when Sabrina sang, “And all my life you have been faithful, and all my life you have been so, so good.” And then again at night when I watched a Disney commercial with a Filipino Lola.
All this to say, my Olympic sized pool is overflowing.
And I know it’s not going to stop anytime soon.
Because I am already fully invested. Thanksgiving hasn’t even passed yet, and I have already put up my Christmas tree and started listening to my advent worship playlist.
I love this season- more specifically advent. I love reflecting on the gift of Jesus and how God knew perfectly what the world needed. How no one could have known the most precious gift ever given would be in the form of a child birthed in a manger. And I can go on and on and on into the details of how amazing this all is, but that’s not why I’m crying and have been crying.
It’s the root cause, yes. It’s the foundation to what these tears are stemming from. But it’s because I know of what happened then that I’m crying because I expect of what will happen now.
God changed the world with the birth of Jesus, and I know He’s changing my world right now, in this season.
The tears have always been a preface to something even greater. Something I could not have imagined to be grown out of suffering. It has always been the before to the wildly, unimaginable greatness that God brings me into.
I remember crying for weeks on end before I left Windward. Crying in my room, looking myself in the mirror, and questioning who I had become. Crying in front of the entire church as my departure was announced.
And then there was the spring where God tugged on my heart and told me to stop walking away from my calling. I cried in the car. I cried at church. I cried in the car some more. I cried until Anuhea reached out to me and asked if I wanted to be a youth leader. Then I stopped crying because God had opened my heart enough to know to say yes.
My Olympic sized swimming pool has never been in vain. And it wasn’t until that pool was upgraded from a kiddie pool to what it is now that I learned God uses every tear. He quite literally catches them all.
So, for all the ones falling right now, I know that He is positioning me into a place I could have never imagined on my own. He’s preparing a gift for me that I didn’t know I was going to receive. Something that will change my world. Something that will alter the trajectory of my life. And it’s all because He loves. All because He knows what’s best for me.