Tears in your bottle

I wrote the following on a scrap piece of paper while substituting in a classroom a few weeks ago.  I was working that day with an incredibly responsible group of high school girls.  There were only 5 of them in the class, and each was studiously involved in her own classwork, so I had the time to sit back and read and write.  I have been reading the book The Red Tent for a second time.  It's a historical fiction about the family of Jacob, told from his only daughter Dinah's perspective.  I read it a few years ago, when I was living in Holland.  At that time, I appreciated the book for the intimate and beautifully written stories of the mother-daughter relationships.  This time around, I find myself touched deeply by the many accounts of pregnancy loss, stillbirth and infant loss.   That day as I sat at the teacher's desk and read my book, it happened to be a time of one of those sad, bloody, sorrowful stories of loss similar to mine.  My tears began to silently flow, and in that moment I was inspired to write this...

I have learned how to cry silently, let my tears pour over my sad eyes, stream down my skin and drop into my hair, which almost always hangs long, its brown waves flowing over my chest, protecting and concealing my broken heart.  I've learned how to tuck the sadness into pockets and let it flow out during the moments when I can be alone... a break in my work schedule, my drive home along the river, at night in bed while the world sleeps, at the end of a rigorous hot yoga workout when most in the room are peacefully meditating.  It's in those quiet moments that I let my tears flow.

I read in my Bible recently that God knows every tear I shed, that He stores up my tears in bottles.  I was quite touched by that.  I like the image that it creates in my mind.  My bottles up there must have increased by the thousands in these past few months.

 ⁸ You keep track of all my sorrows.
      You have collected all my tears in your bottle.
      You have recorded each one in your book.

                                ~Psalm 56:8 (New Living Translation)