Thursday, November 09, 2006

Surprised by Tears

Tears and the whole business of crying are odd.  Aren’t they?  

Sometimes you expect tears, but don’t get them.  Several years ago, a great and wonderful elder’s wife who meant so much to me died.   Not long after I got the call, I was traveling from Connecticut to Arkansas for her funeral.  

From the moment I got the news, to that first time that I saw her husband and family again, to “calling hours” and seeing her body, to the funeral, and finally the cemetery, I never cried.  Not even a little bit.  I can still remember how it bothered and embarrassed me, the absence of tears.  To this day I can’t explain it.

There are other times when tears come from nowhere.  Well, that’s stretching it.  They come from somewhere, just not the place you expected and can identify.  It happened just this morning.  

The course outline for the New Testament class said we were supposed to be covering the Letter to the Hebrews today.  After I returned the third exam (over Paul and his letters) and reviewed it with the students, I had about an hour left.  An hour.   . . .   To introduce and overview Hebrews.  . . .  Survey courses are so frustrating.

Anyway, after discussing how odd Hebrews is, and some of what’s going on behind the words of this letter, we started looking closely at the text itself.  I was eager to get to those parts where the speaker offers a theological interpretation (God’s view) of people suffering for the sake of Christ.   I was reading from chapter 2,

“In bringing many sons to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the author of their salvation perfect through suffering.  Both the one who makes men holy and those who are made holy are of the same family.  So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers.”

That’s when and where it hit me.  I caught myself and within a second or two was able to go on.  But I never once expected such emotion.  And I still don’t know exactly how that happened.  

Of course I can say that I love how this prose, even in translation, seems much closer to poetry.  I might mention how Jesus owning up to me as his kid brother is such a tender image.  I can say how much it means to think that I’ve been miraculously born into the best family ever.  I guess it’s all of that and more.  

But, again, like the reasons why I shed no tears at the death of a loved one, I’m far from certain why I got all choked up this morning.

What about you?  Ever wished you could cry and expected to, but didn’t?  Ever been completely surprised by the arrival of sudden tears?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I alwyas know I shouldnt watch "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" but I do anyway. I always get teary on that show. I too had an unexpected tearful moment when reading Hebrews. The author spends so much time building up what the readers have and how great a slavation it is. He says we have unrestricted access to God. He then says that some are in danger of throwing that away. I do not think I was so convicted of a particular struggle in my life as I was the notion that we can be given something so precious and then walk away from it. It got me.

Thanks for the post!
~JK

Arlene Kasselman said...

Frank, don't know you well enough to lay this on you. And I am easily moved emotionally. But, for me I notice that sometimes my emotional responses are in connection to woundedness or pain I have tried to squash or get over. Sometimes, I have even thought I was over something and then it surprises me again.

When reading the passage you cited it makes we wonder if there has been a time when you have been hurt and not felt the brotherly love of those around you yet, Jesus our King extendes that to you. I am pretty overwhelmed just thinking about that.
Did not mean to get all Dr. Phil on you!

Frank Bellizzi said...

Arlene, it's okay if you go Dr. Phil now and then. Just don't adopt the accent and hair style.

Judging from those life-event stress lists, I think I probably should have died back in about 2002. Once, I hung on just to irk the one or two people who hoped I wouldn't.

I suspect we all have some tears tucked away somewhere. The timing is still a mystery to me. It's sort of like one's taste in music or personal company, not always predictable.