That's A Really Big Bottle

In my Bible reading last week, I came across this verse: You have kept record of my days of wandering. You have stored my tears in your bottle and counted each of them.  Psalms 56:8. I'm sure I've read it before; this is my 4th year of reading the Bible through.  But I don't remember ever really thinking hard about it.  God keeps all my tears.  That's pretty amazing, really.  I think I could've filled the jar in this photo last Thursday alone.  Thursday marked 3 months since Kevin died.  One-quarter of a year.  13 weeks.  91 days.  An incomprehensible amount of time.  I tried several times to write a blog post to mark the day, but I couldn't finish any of them.  Most days I do okay at focusing on the good times Kevin & I had, but last Thursday was full of memories of his death, and I cried a lot.  

And I came back to this verse.  God was keeping all those tears.  Because He loves me.  I am keeping

lots of mementos of Kevin: cards he gave me, favorite clothes he wore, even notepads he doodled on when he was on the phone.  As time goes by, I will probably have to pare those down to a few select things, but right now my instinct is to keep everything Kevin touched.

It's the same when you are a parent: you keep your child's baby teeth, a clipping from their first haircut, countless pictures they draw and cards they make for you.  But as the years go by, you have to go through all those pictures and save a select few, then let the others go or end up on Hoarders.

But God keeps record of all my days, and stores all my tears.  And that's a really big bottle.  I've always been a crier; it doesn't take much to get my waterworks flowing.  (I kind of want to tell God He probably doesn't need to keep the tears I cry when I see that commercial with the Clydesdales and the puppy.)  In GriefShare they tell us to hold on to what we know to be true about God, regardless of how we feel, and this verse helps me to do that.  And what I know is that I'm not alone when I cry myself to sleep at night.  God is there, and He's paying attention.  How huge is that?  It doesn't make the pain of losing Kevin go away, but it does make it easier to bear.