With tears streaming down......

Even though I have walked in this body for 39 years now, there are still things I am learning about myself, and must embrace....because they are part of my "G0d-given wiring" and they aren't going to change. I am coming to grips with the fact that I am a "feeler" and no matter what I do to fight the joys and pains of having that attribute, it is never going to leave me. I feel a person's triumph....I feel their tragedies. I feel so much some times, I struggle with how to communicate it beyond my feeble words. I doubt that people will believe me when I tell them that I truly "feel their pain." (No thanks to Bill Clinton!!) My husband always tells me that our greatest strengths can sometimes be our greatest weaknesses. I don't like to hear that, but he is right. Because as I sit here before you right now, I have tears streaming down my cheeks. And this is why:

Last week, a friend of mine sent me a link to a blog she had been following recently. In her email to me, she briefly described the subject matter of the blog, and my instant thought was, "I am not going to be able to handle this. I can't read it. I won't." But Gregg was flying, the girls were in bed for the night, and it was just the laptop and me, so I decided to click on the link. For the next hour, I read through entry after entry, as if I were reading a book, wanting desperately to get to the happy ending. I did everything I could to keep my tears under control and not allow "Hoover Dam" to burst. I kept selfishly saying to myself, "You know you won't fall asleep if you start crying now. You have a lot to accomplish tomorrow. You need your rest." I successfully kept my eyes dry but I noticed I wasn't allowing myself to feel the words of this blog like I would have, if I would have just allowed the tears to flow. Emotion is such a big part of who I am. Because I wasn't allowing myself to feel it, I wasn't absorbing it like I should.

Today, I revisited the site to learn more of how the family was doing, how they were praising God through their circumstances. And then.....the Dam broke. As much as we as a sinful society shine a spotlight on people's pain, this is not my heart's intention in sharing this with you this morning. But if you would like to be inspired, if you would like to see God glorified in the midst of someone's intense season of "rain," I think it would be worth reading. You never know how God might use this story in your own life. If you are a feeler like me, it may be too much for you, and I am learning that there is nothing wrong with that. Feel free to avoid it if you need to. That is perfectly OK. It really is.

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