by Katie Schuermann
I can cry at the drop of a hat.
This post is not a flex. I am not boasting of any special talent or ability. I am simply trying to put into words the visceral, to explain something physical that happens when being disciplined by the Lord, when barrenness persists beyond everyone’s expectations, when “take up your cross and follow Me” (Matthew 16:24) translates into decades.
It opens you up, that’s what.
So when my optometrist confides in the darkened exam room that she now has to take a hormone-suppressing pill to keep her breast cancer at bay, my tears fog the very lenses trying to correct my vision.
When my neighbor texts me a picture of her positive pregnancy test, I bend at the waist in my kitchen and cry to the Lord both in praise and in pain for His goodness to her and to me, though His goodness bears different fruit in each of us.
When my godson bows his head and begs me not to leave him on his first day of preschool, my tears fall to the floor and splash beside his own.
Why do I live like a fissure — a rock cracked open — my hot-lava emotions always bubbling just below the surface? One little earthquake, one tiny seismic event, and my face becomes a volcano.
From my perspective, it is because the cross of barrenness is so very public, so very painful, so very present. It already demands attention and energy both from me and from those living around me, no matter what else comes our way. It is a heavy thing, a burden carried into every moment, a tax exacted upon every personal and public interaction.
I’m not saying that barrenness is the focus of my life. I am saying that it accompanies my living. It enters the room with me, not like an elephant, exactly, but more like a hole. For it is the absence of my children in the room that everyone feels, and carrying all of those feelings wears a girl down.
But something important needs explaining.
My easy tears do not always come because I am in pain. More often than not, they come because my pain is being relieved.
In the case of my optometrist, I cried because, in bearing her burden, I was unburdened of my loneliness. I have no children in my home to nurture, so when God puts children-grown-up on my path in need of my motherly attention and care, I am more purposed than pained.
In the case of my neighbor, I cried because I experienced relief upon remembering that God does give the gift of children, if not to me. I was able to catch my breath for a minute under the ongoing weight of my cross, because I recalled that God’s withholding children from my own womb must serve some greater good (Romans 8:28), or I would be pregnant, too.
In the case of my godson, I cried because I was stunned with joy to be so wanted and cherished by a child not my own.
My point is this. I am a crybaby, but my weepy ways are not simply the result of world-weariness. I blink tears, because God in His abundant mercy deigns to comfort me in my barrenness day after cross-bearing day.
I am tearing up now just thinking about it.
