For crying in the sink!

My late father never used foul language, but he did have a few expressions of frustrations. One was “Horse feathers!” and the other was “For crying in the sink!”

Well, Dad, the other day I was crying in the sink. Copious tears. And I hadn’t broken a dish or cooked a wretched dinner.
My husband had just sold a bike he fixed up, and in the door along with payment came two large onions. A tip from the buyer? Sometimes, I just don’t ask. Because I don’t use onions much in cooking, I chop them up and freeze them in egg-size portions to use as needed.

As so, weep, bawl, buckets of face-dribblers, I was rendering those big white tear-jerkers to freezable portions.

If you really care to know, we cry when chopping onions because they produce the chemical irritant known as syn-propanethial-S-oxide, which stimulates the eyes' lachrymal glands so they release tears.( For you avid chemists, learn more at: http://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/mysteries/onion.html.)

I’d been thinking about crying lately, anyway, as I mull over writing something on the blessing of tears. Revelation 21:4 has lodged in my heart in recent weeks: “He will wipe every tear from their eyes.” The scene is Heaven. No more death, mourning, crying or pain, “for the old order of things has passed away.”

My prayer notebook has a few tear splotches on it. I’m going to more funerals where tears leak unashamedly. Some early mornings when I rise to hear the birds and listen to God, tears come. I think of the perfect place, the “abode” (the accurate meaning of the Greek mone in John 14:6, not “mansions”) that God is planning.

I dug a little deeper into the verse and looked up the Greek word we translate as "wipe away," exaleipho. It comes from two words, "out" and "to anoint," and means "to wipe out or away." This is the picture it provides me: Yahweh, the Sovereign of all time and place, comes to me. With the fingers that created a universe, He cups my face and thumbs away the earth-stains of tears. He whispers, “No more tears. Come to My joy and peace.” Every tear, gone.

And once the vision blurred by pained tears is cleared, I will stand amazed at what I never knew.

In the Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis, there’s a conversation that always made me think of arriving in Heaven. Lewis had the talking unicorn in The Last Battle declare, “I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now.”

For crying in the sink? Not at all. For crying for joy? Maybe.

And here’s my trivia question: Will there be onions in Heaven?

Birthday Babe

Hear ye, hear ye. I declare the truth, that I am turning 63 this week.

Sixty three!

In childhood you never consider yourself getting old, gray, and wrinkled. Or having a droopy anatomy (including wobbly upper arms--cluck, cluck). Enjoying your daily prunes. Having to say, “Just a minute until I get my glasses on.” Realizing you’re saying “huh?” a lot more than you used to. (My hearing loss began when my kids participated in puberty’s art of mumbling.)

Yup, I’m there. But I also realized I’ve now outlived my mother (she died of cancer just after her 59th birthday) and soon will outlive my father (he died of a heart attack at 63 years, 3 months).

I take comfort in knowing I’m not the oldest chick working out at a women’s gym. (It doesn’t have mirrors, dahling….)

This past year, as I’ve transitioned out of years of care-giving, I’ve been asking what the Lords wants of the rest of my earthly life.

I certainly have some role models. Noah, boat-building and zoo-keeping at 600. (Alas, maintaining a 15-pound cat doesn’t compare.) Abraham and Sarah, outfitting a nursery at 90 (let’s skip that one, though I am collecting classic kid books for future grandkids). Moses, going on an extended wilderness trek at 80. Caleb, homesteading at 80. Not to forget Anna, still serving in the temple at 84. John, in his 90s, writing in his spare time in a hard-labor prison.

Right now, the word “continue” comes to mind. As in: continue enjoying my “senior discount” at the thrift stores (some kick it in at 55, others at 60).
But even more important: to “continue in your faith, established and firm, not moved from the hope held out in the gospel” (Colossians 1:23).

By my bed I’ve hung a framed copy of the words to my favorite hymn, “Be Thou My Vision”:
Be Thou my Vision, O Lord of my heart;
Naught be all else to me, save what Thou art—
Thou my best thought by day or by night,
Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.

I need that reminder on the days I look in a mirror and the face looking back has more lines than notebook paper and those once dramatic black eyebrows are more like a weed patch. (I won’t even start in on the chin thistles.) My neck has a backup crew and everything south of there has gone south.

But the curtain hasn’t fallen yet. Moses, who knew plenty about “the best is yet to come” (his most significant ministry happened between 80 and 120), wrote, “Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love, that we may sing for joy and be glad for all our days” (Psalm 90:14).

That’s my birthday song, friends. Each morning, glad for a fresh start.