The Garden of our tears 

By: Carole L. Haines
(Picture taken by: Cody J. Haines)

 “Return and say to Hezekiah the leader of My people, ‘Thus says the Lord, the God of your father David, “I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears; behold, I will heal you. On the third day you shall go up to the house of the Lord. (2 Kings 20:5) 

God desires to bring great healing to the brokenness in our lives. Jesus didn’t die just to save us from our sins and hell. His death provided the way for us to be set free from the ravages of sin, both ours and the fallout we suffer from the sins of others. There are things we go through as humans because of other people’s poor choices that can cause us deep and searing pain. When it’s the same sin committed against us over and over, the pain can be so great that we don’t even know what to do with it, so we swallow it back down, again and again. I have been crying out to God for relief and release from such agony. This morning I woke up with such a pit in my stomach, I went out on the porch and there is where it began. The tears came like a flood and I just began to pour out all the pain, like a river they flowed until there was nothing left to cry. Our tears are so precious to God. We need them and they’re a gift from Him. It is how we give God our pain, they are His channel, a Cleansing River. 

You have taken account of my wanderings;
Put my tears in Your bottle. Are they not in Your book?
 Then my enemies will turn back in the day when I call.
This I know, that God is for me. (Psalm 56: 8-9) 

A lot of the pain I was crying out was self-blame. Have you ever told yourself,
“It’s all my fault! This is happening to me again and again because there is something wrong with me.”
Sometimes it is a result of our own sin, but sometimes it is the result of the sin of others. It’s so hard to cry out the pain when others sin against you, There’s a two-fold piece to release in these matters. These things cannot just be cried out. Forgiveness needs to be the road walked while crying out the pain. Jesus calls us to forgive others and He has forgiven us. But my question since childhood, even in forgiveness, has been,
“But what do I do with all this pain?”
I believe tears are the vessel by which We give our pain to God. 
Some people feel like they shouldn’t need to cry, they steel themselves against the sins of others becoming impenetrable fortresses. But soon they find themselves locked in a prison of their own making.
Some people cry over everything, wasting tears on petty whining because they didn’t get their own way. The value of tears will mean little to them.
But some come to see that tears are a gift, a cleansing river. And we find that we never have to cry alone, because God is right here with us, as we cry collecting our tears in His bottle, letting them pour out onto the pages of the story He is is writing for us.
God makes a Beautiful promise to us in His Word, it is a promise of Restoration. 

4 Restore our captivity, O Lord, as the streams in the South.
5 Those who sow in tears shall reap with joyful shouting.
6 He who goes to and fro weeping, carrying his bag of seed,
Shall indeed come again with a shout of joy, bringing his sheaves with him.
(Psalm 126:4-5) 

So, cry those tears, Dear Brother and Sister in Christ. Let them flow out of you as a gift from God. Life hurts, people hurt us, our sins and failings hurt and we need a way to give the pain and regret to God. Tears are a gift, and God hears our crying and has promised to come and rescue us, Bringing something beautiful out of the Garden of our tears. Jesus once watered a Garden with His tears. He knows, He understands. He cares and is right here with us, holding the bottle into which our tears fall.