Tears of the Savior

Several nights ago, as I began to rock and nurse my baby to sleep, she bit me.  Now, this has happened before, and I can generally handle it.  But that night I went nuts.  I was startled at the violence of my own reaction.  "NO!" I yelled, and I pulled her away.  I called for my husband to come rock her, which really upset her because she wanted me, but for some reason I just had zero patience inside of me.  My husband took her, and I left with her crying uncontrollably in his arms.  Once she was finally asleep, I went in to look at her.  She was huddled against my husband, little choking sobs still coming out of her limp body as she lay there, asleep.  And I felt horrible.  Why couldn't I handle her in that moment?  The fury with which I reacted - it really startled me.  

Before I went to sleep, I had my evening prayer time.  I was so distraught over the way I had treated my daughter.  And I was really worried that maybe I had scarred her for life or something by just abandoning her in her tears.  I know, I know, this may be a "new mom" thing and I'll get over it by the third child, but in that moment the concern, the distress, the shock at how upset I became - these were very real to me.  And I brought them in prayer to God.

As I sat there, praying, I saw the image of Christ, grieving over the sins of the world, agonizing on the cross.  As I imagined this image, his tears and my daughter's tears of distress became one.  My sin caused both.  In their unity, my daughter's grief became less life-threatening.  Not because my sinning against her somehow isn't really all that bad, but because the cross confronts the depth of the badness and goes deeper still.  It embraces her cry along with the cries of every human being who live in a world with broken people who break each other over and over again from the moment of birth, sometimes without even knowing it, and often dismissively.  And insofar as the cross is redemptive, it offers the very real potential for the genuine redemption of all this grief, including the redemption of my daughter's tears that night.

What is more, as I imagined this image of Christ, his tears and my tears became one.  That God would send his Son to die on the cross - so great must be his grief over the sinfulness of the world.  I, too, in that moment, deeply grieved the limitations of my flesh in raising my daughter.  God didn't tell me I was over-reacting.  He grieved with me.  And he offers me the cross as his powerful answer to this grief.  Thanks be to God that there is genuine power in the cross for the redemption of my own heart - a heart that does not yet love perfectly.