I Cleaned And Then I Cried

You were doing fine.

That is the part that catches people. You were not thinking about anything difficult. You were clearing a shelf, or a drawer, or the top of a chest, and it was going well, and something in you was even quietly pleased.

And then you were on the floor and you could not stop.

Or you were standing there with your hand over your mouth. Or you got as far as the kitchen and sat down and did not move for a long time.

And afterward the thing you felt was not sadness. It was fear. Because whatever came up came up out of nowhere, with no warning, out of a completely ordinary Tuesday evening, and if it can do that then it can do it again, and now the room is not just a room. It is a place where something happened to you.

So you have not been back in. And the corner you cleared, which was real work, has been sitting there for weeks with a feeling attached to it.

Put thou my tears into thy bottle

There is a verse in the Psalms that has an image in it I have never gotten over.

Thou tellest my wanderings: put thou my tears into thy bottle: are they not in thy book? (Psalm 56:8, King James Version)

Put thou my tears into thy bottle.

Think about what that is describing. It is not that God permits crying. It is not that He tolerates it or waits it out. It is collecting. Keeping. Something is being gathered up and stored because it is valuable.

And the question at the end, are they not in thy book, is the psalmist checking. He is saying, this is being recorded, is it not. And the way it is written assumes yes.

So the tears on the floor of that room on Tuesday were not a mess. They were not a collapse. In the picture Scripture gives, they were collected.

You are not looking at a breakdown, and Psalm 56:8 has never once treated tears as something to be got past. It is written that they go into a bottle and into a book, which is language about keeping rather than enduring, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that real for somebody who is frightened of their own crying.

You have been treating what happened as an accident, and never once has anything in Scripture described tears that way. The word has them gathered and written down, and the Spirit of God is the one who was in that room collecting when nobody else was there.

Why it came when your hands were busy

Now let me say something practical about the timing, because I think it will take the frightening edge off.

It came in the middle of something ordinary being done with a pair of hands. That is not random and it is not a sign of anything wrong. A room like that is a record of what a hard year cost, and it is not a verdict on the woman standing in it.

When a person is talking, or thinking, or trying, the front of the mind is occupied and it keeps the gate. When the hands are busy with something simple and repetitive, the front of the mind goes quiet, and things that have been waiting can come up.

You have hands that were busy and a gate that came unguarded for eleven minutes, and no drawer anywhere has ever once been capable of what happened in that room. Psalm 56:8 collects rather than files, and the Spirit of God is the one who was present when a thing that had waited a long time finally came up.

That is why people cry driving. That is why people cry in the shower. That is why people cry clearing a drawer.

It did not come because of the drawer. It came because for about eleven minutes nobody was guarding the door, and something that had been standing there a long time walked through.

You were never ambushed by a room, and there has never once been anything in that drawer capable of doing that to you. Psalm 56:8 puts tears in a bottle rather than in an incident report, and the Spirit of God is the one who is present when something waited a long time and finally came up.

And here is the piece I most want you to have. The clearing still happened. It did not stop being work because it ended in tears. Those are two separate events and shame has glued them together.

You are permitted to count the corner and count the crying separately, and separating them has never once been dishonest. It is written that the tears are collected and the wanderings are told, both, without either canceling the other, and the Holy Spirit is the one who holds two true things at once.

Go and look at the corner

So here is what I am asking, and I want to be gentle about it because I know what I am asking.

Go and look at the corner you cleared. Only look. Standing in the exact spot is not required if the spot is hard. The doorway is fine.

Look at it and say, out loud if you can: I did that, and then I cried, and both of those happened, and neither one erases the other.

Then go and sit down and clean nothing.

You are able to hold both of those tonight, and holding them has never once required you to understand what came up. Psalm 56:8 keeps the tears and tells the wanderings in the same breath, and the Spirit of God is present in a doorway with somebody who is still a bit afraid of a room.