conquerors cry

“I’m gonna cry,” Riley says, just as her voice begins to break. A bewildered sigh escapes, and she absently touches her own cheek, as though to catch tears that haven’t yet dripped. She has just begun to tell our small group what happened to her, about the seizure that took her from school to the hospital a few weeks ago.

“That’s okay,” I tell her. “It’s okay to cry.”

“Yes, it is,” my friend says, echoing me. She nods, encouraging Riley to continue. Trusted friends shore up our crumbling.

I’m not sure why we want to hide our feelings. I look around the room, and I think we look like a renovation project, with our folded arms and life-rough fingers, all untucked hems and destroyed jeans. One friend tips his head back against the wall, closes his eyes because sometimes it hurts to see, another absently rubs her own tired shoulders with one hand. Looks can be deceiving. God’s temple is only glorious because He fills it, and that glory He reveals as He pleases. We are support beams for each other, our hearts stretched and swelling. In this one room, our cracks make a new kind of God-leaking art.

I listen while Riley splays her heart, moving a flat hand in front of her like she’s tenderly unfolding the layers. Drawn back in my mind to a time when my daughter could not have acknowledged her feelings out loud, when she pounded her little girl fists against the wall, when she hid her beet-red cheeks against my legs and screamed, I give thanks for the gift of now. These recollections overtake me like my own tears, clogging up my throat. Do you know how amazing it is that God has taught her to say this? I want to say this out loud, but I don’t want to embarrass her or interrupt her confession.

I look around the room at the faces of our friends, alert and open. Riley shows us Jesus, right now consigning her honest grief to prayer, right now inviting close friends to witness her tears. She shows us the Jesus of Gethsemane, and she doesn’t know. She doesn’t know how her resolve to share every side of love also moves us to love more authentically, how her persistent faith in God’s power moves us to boldly rise. She doesn’t see that as she follows Jesus into that garden and invites us to keep watch, we begin to pick up our own crosses too. We begin to understand that conquerors cry.

So sitting together we share Riley’s tears. And in prayer, the Spirit reminds us that we can dread our pain and still see it through to the resurrection.