.a heart spilling out.

Tears are how the heart speaks. I know that when tears come to the surface and I get the lump in my throat that I used to get when I would get dropped off at summer camp for 2 weeks – something’s happening in my heart, it's spilling out in the best way it knows how.

And at that juncture, I have 2 choices – 1) embrace it or 2) fight it.

Depending on where I am and who I’m with is usually how I make that choice, but there are those times when fighting it is not an option, which leaves one with only the option to embrace.

So today… I embrace them.

I embrace them because they today they are for a couple in my home group who is going on ten years of battling her brain tumor and the road is way too long. I embrace them because they today they are for a local pastor and his family who just got the very disheartening news that his 6-year-old daughter’s cancer is back and appears to be attacking organs and inoperable. I embrace them because today they are for injustice happening in Africa to a people who have some of the purest hearts I’ve seen. I embrace them because today they are for one of my dearest friends and her husband who have been in a wilderness of miscarriages and heartache for entirely too long. I embrace them because today they represent questions in my own life that don’t seem to have answers.

I embrace them and I give them back to my Father because while His kingdom is here now, it is also not here yet – in its fullness at least. Man, I can’t wait for that day.

But until then, I will try to embrace them when they come – because they are my heart spilling out and because those tender moments are when my Abba draws nearest to me. So Lord, be near.