Via National Acrobat @ Flickr
It had been a long time since I cried during church.
Crying on Sunday during worship used to be kind of my thing for awhile. Shortly after I really started walking close to Jesus a few years ago, Sunday church service would all but bring me to my knees. I had always struggled with being vulnerable… after all, I was the tough farm girl that everyone called the “Rock.”
But during that season of life, I was hurting. It was in the middle of the biggest storm to date and my heart was hurting. A deployment, a terrible job, no sleep, miles from friends/family… crying in church was a regular occurrence.
Afterwards, things simmered down for awhile but soon fired back up again. Hubs was working a ton of hours with his job and I was trying to keep my eyes focused on Jesus, battling the fear that our second pregnancy would end in miscarriage like our first.
So I cried a lot in church then too.
Then I had our little girl and was battling all the craziness that came with being a new mommy: Exhaustion, apprehension, loneliness, you name it. Oh, and we were facing a 4000 mile cross-country move in the coming days.
Yep, you guessed it… There were some tears in church then too (at least whenever I got to join worship instead of camping out in the nursing mother’s room.)
It had been nearly a year and a half since that last season of churchy-tears… and then one Sunday, the tears started to flow again as the worship music filled my soul.
Only this time, they were different kind of tears.
Tears of frustration. Tears of confusion. But most of all, tears of conviction.
I don’t know what the song was, but something inside of me broke loose. I knew that I had been downright mean and snappy to my husband for weeks. Why, I have no idea– but I knew it was not ok.
Barn had went to the bathroom during worship, which made annoyance bubble up from a deep place within me. But as I stood there feeling the beat of the drums and the rhythm of the guitar pounding in the sanctuary, something broke.
I realized just how un-legitly I had been treating Brandon. Sure I was under a lot of (self-imposed) pressure of trying to reach some pretty hardcore goals in a short amount of time, and being a mom with no family within a two-thousand mile radius is hard, but really it was no excuse.
So I cried. Great big, huge, drippy, snotty crocodile tears.
My heart broke over my behavior and I begged God to forgive me for all of my yuck. I then started to get angry at myself for the ugly moments that I had created the last few weeks.
But then I heard God speak: “Daughter, my grace is sufficient for you. Ugly moments are a part of walking with Me, for it is in those ugly moments that you realize how much you truly need Christ.”
I stopped short. The tears slowed and I felt the hard coating on my heart start to crumble. A glimmer of hope started to glow from my darkest places as I embraced the knowledge that God can work mightily even through our ugly moments.
Where do you find yourself “being ugly” most often? How have you witnessed God working in there? Join the conversation and leave a comment.
We are not called to ignore our ugly moments. Instead, we can acknowledge them and embrace the eternal redemption that flows from Christ through their very core.
Friends, believe it or not, we need those ugly moments in life, because it is in those ugly moments when we truly understand our deep, never-ending need for Christ Jesus Himself.
Needing Him Always,
“But I cry to you for help, Lord; in the morning my prayer comes before you.” ~Psalm 88:13 NIV
Linking up today with Jen over at Soli Deo Gloria Sisterhood, Hazel via Tell Me a Story and Jennifer Dukes Lee over at #TellHisStory. Be sure to join our #EverydayJesus link-up community right here at 7 Days Time every Thursday!
