All I Need Is Jesus and a Good Pair of Jeans: The Tired Supergirl's Search for Grace (15 page)

In John 6:38, Jesus says, “For I have come down from heaven to do the will of God who sent me, not to do what I want.”

Jesus knew exactly what he was doing. Jesus wasn’t manipulated; he didn’t crumble, because he was all about obeying the Father. It took pleasing other people out of the equation. His whole mission in life is to do what the Father sent him to do and be who the Father created him to be. So it really didn’t matter to him when he caused upheaval or pandemonium and when people got angry. He knew he was going where he was supposed to go, doing what he was supposed to do, saying what he was supposed to say. It wasn’t easy for him, but he chose it. He chose obedience.

In the Sermon on the Mount, he gave this example.

I will show you what it’s like when someone comes to me, listens to my teaching, and then obeys me. It is like a person who builds a house on a strong foundation laid upon the underlying rock. When the floodwaters rise and break against the house, it stands firm because it is well built. But anyone who listens and doesn’t obey is like a person who builds a house without a foundation. When the floods sweep down against that house, it will crumble into a heap of ruins.

Luke 6:47–49

So it basically comes down to foundation. Who and what we supergirls build our lives around. Who we believe in, who we listen to, and who we follow shapes the way we walk in this world. Are we living for the approval of
them
or for the approval of the One who created us? Paul asks the same thing of the church in Galatia.

Obviously, I’m not trying to be a people pleaser! No, I am trying to please God. If I were still trying to please people, I would not be Christ’s servant.

Galatians 1:10

Whoever
they
are in your life, the ones you are trying to please, you cannot possibly base who you are on trying to be who they want you to be because, for goodness’ sake, it’s like building your house on a pile of sand. And all this striving and pleasing others to gain their acceptance or a raise or a bit of peace in your house, it doesn’t mean a whole lot because next Tuesday it could all change.

The thing is, when we supergirls follow Jesus, you can hear the meaningless chatter of Miss Do They Like Me? fizzle out. The foremost question in our minds shifts to “Is this what God wants me to do?” And the beautiful thing about God is that his thinking doesn’t change. His ways do not change. So we are not trying to shift back and forth to please people who are fickle and ever changing, we are digging in and building our lives around the One who is never going to change. And we get to stand firm in the foundation of obeying Christ, listening for his direction and living free.

I love how singer/songwriter Sara Groves speaks truth through her songs. The truth about living free. The truth about walking the journey the way we were meant to. She’s a supergirl who doesn’t play. She sings a song about this journey. Instead of losing herself trying to live for others, she is choosing to live out her journey for an audience of one. Instead of being broken down in the pursuit of pleasing others, she is choosing to live and breathe for Jesus. Now that’s some good thinking on her part. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to spend our lives living for others, when Jesus is the only one who gave his life for us. When we are living to please the One who created us, inevitably, we will be living the life we were created for. And that is something a tired supergirl can get happy about.

19

I CRY A LOT

I
might as well lay it out. I cry. A lot. I cry about all sorts of things. Sad things. Happy things. The first wail of a newborn baby. My little boys covering me with their kisses. Feeling misunderstood. Scott telling me I am a good wife. Laughing really hard. Documentaries on the Rwanda genocide. Notes from my mom. Encouragement. Loneliness. Sympathy. Disappointment. Injustice. Seeing my college girlfriends at a wedding—supergirls, every one of them. Wearing maternity jeans
after
the baby is born. Seeing someone make fun of my son. A lot of tears reflecting a lot of different emotions. The happy cry. The sad cry. The mad cry. The if-you’re-not-nice-to-my-kid-you’re-going-down cry.

But I prefer to cry alone. If I do cry in front of someone, it is usually my husband. He is my go-to guy when it comes to crying. Like most supergirls, I don’t want others to know my weakness and my pain. I would rather talk about my hard times when I am on the other side of them, triumphant and healed.

Last fall, I visited my cousin Gretchen, who is a supergirl in every way. She had recently had a baby, and I was still reeling from a violent bout of postpartum depression. A year of sadness. Usually when we are together, we laugh, drink cups of hot tea, and tell stories about our kids. We kick off our shoes and enjoy each other’s company without pretense. But as we started chatting, we began speaking of the darkness and how life feels too weighty to hold up on the hard days. I began to unravel. With deep sobs, I told her about how my heart hurt and how I could not see any brightness in the near future. I told her about how life was overwhelming me and I didn’t know how to work my way out of the pit. I shared my anger, my confusion, and my hopelessness. I cried about the rough places I didn’t know how to overcome and confessed that I felt like I was failing my husband and my kids.

She listened. And she hugged me. She was with me in my ache. It was good. She prayed over me, for me, and with me. But as I drove back home, I began to feel embarrassed about how I had collapsed. I felt a little foolish at the depth of emotion I had revealed, and I wondered how I could backpedal over that scene. How I could make excuses for myself. I would have to call her and tell her it was my hormones. Or maybe the building sleep depravity? There had to be some clear reason for my breakdown. I would think of something. I could hardly bear for my cousin, one of my closest friends, to know how undone I truly was. I couldn’t possibly be that vulnerable, that wounded, and have her think it was just, you know, me.

There are few things more soul baring than sitting with someone while you sob. While you cry over a job interview gone awry or a boyfriend who cheated on you. While you grieve over a loved one or the death of a dream. While you mourn your first speeding ticket or buckle under a month’s worth of stress. Crying with someone is intimate and soul baring.

Why is it that we supergirls have trouble showing who we truly are? Why are we so afraid to share with others, even the ones who love us most, what touches our hearts and crushes our souls? We fight back the big lumps in our throats and blink fifty times per second to keep the tears corralled. Why do we choose to cry alone? Well, for one thing, very few of us cry pretty. There are the puffy eyes, splotchy cheeks, pink faces, runny noses, various squawks, hiccups, the after-crying shudders, crumpled foreheads, and do I really need to go on?

And then there is the fact that crying is a window into our souls. Our tears show people what really matters to us. If we let people see our tears, they get to see the real us. Tears strip away pretense, and all that is left is the truth of who we are and where we are at.

I think a mixture of pride and fear keeps our tears in check. We want to appear in control, and we are deathly afraid of showing our hearts and our passion to those around us. It wasn’t always this way. As kids, crying was the way we made our feelings known. We cried to show we were hungry, tired, hurt, or even bored. When puberty hit and those hormones kicked in, we budding supergirls went into crying overdrive. I remember standing in front of my closet at the age of twelve, sobbing hysterically at my ugly apparel. Was there no beauty in the world? Or when I saw the first boy I ever kissed playing ping-pong with another girl. This was real stuff. I felt it deeply. It mattered. The only way I could power through it was to cry it out. Lots of lonely, sad, hot tears and some badly written poetry got me through junior high and high school.

But somewhere in the growing up, Sister Stoic made herself known. She would sigh, “Aren’t you just a tad overly emotional?”

Or, “There you go again—out of control. You are really letting yourself go.”

Or, “Do you see how they are looking at you? Pull yourself together.”

We supergirls really would like to cry, but we feel that crying belies a weakness in us. It hurts to let people know we are hurting. The vulnerability costs us too much. We want to be strong. We think if we cry, we give our strength away to whoever or whatever causes our tears.

So we hide our tears. We refuse to cry in front of the boys who shattered our hearts. We don’t let our roommates know that we ache inside when they choose other friends over us. We sharpen our wits to joke our way through painful moments. When depression sets in, we separate ourselves until we can present ourselves whole. We can’t bear the thought of breaking down in front of someone. We shove the emotion down deep and hold it in. We make ourselves a few allowances, like chick flicks or our wedding day, but for the most part, we keep the crazy under wraps.

And the funny thing is, we are just as uncomfortable with other people’s tears. Awkward. Who knows what to say? We tired supergirls can barely handle our own tears, let alone others. We feel overwhelmed by their pain and our inability to help them. This reinforces our belief that we should just keep our tears to ourselves. We don’t want to overwhelm others with our aching hearts. We want to be women who are calm. Women who fall apart are not quite so super. Isn’t the phrase “crying supergirl” an oxymoron? And really, who will love a crying supergirl?

Jesus. Jesus will love a crying supergirl. And he knows how to comfort a crying supergirl, because he gets it. Jesus cried. And he was a man, for goodness’ sake. Not to mention the creator of the universe. The Scriptures say he wept. Not a little sniffle. Weeping means a good, hard cry.

Jesus cried when his friend Lazarus died. Lazarus and his sisters, Mary and Martha, were his good friends. He spent time at their home eating with them and teaching in their living room. He loved them and they loved him. I can only imagine the thoughts that went through his mind when he heard about Lazarus’s passing. He made his way to his friends’ house at the most aching, sorrowful, gut-wrenching time in their lives. The story goes like this:

When the people who were at the house trying to console Mary saw her leave so hastily, they assumed she was going to Lazarus’s grave to weep. So they followed her there. When Mary arrived and saw Jesus, she fell down at his feet and said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

When Jesus saw her weeping and saw the other people wailing with her, he was moved with indignation and was deeply troubled. “Where have you put him?” he asked them.

They told him, “Lord, come and see.”

Then Jesus wept. The people who were standing nearby said, “See how much he loved him.”

John 11:31–36

Now I don’t think Jesus was crying over Lazarus. I have a sneaking hunch he knew in just a few moments he would raise Lazarus from the dead. I’m thinking he knew that was the plan all along. So why would he cry? Why was he so troubled? I think he cried with his friends. He felt what they felt and he was moved by their pain. He didn’t mock them. He didn’t shut them down. He didn’t excuse their emotion as foolishness. He joined them. He lived with these people, and what was important to them was important to him. Jesus is passionate about people. They are what matters to him. He was compelled to tears on Mary’s behalf. He loved Mary when she was crying and shared her pain with him. And he is ready to love a crying supergirl and share her pain too.

Tears aren’t shameful. They are real. All the emotion that weighs us down seeps out of our eyes and somehow we are able to let it go. We are passionate supergirls. And we really, really feel things. It is part and parcel of womanhood. And Jesus is good with that. When he was filled with sorrow, he cried. The savior of our souls wept over Jerusalem. He cried about things that mattered, like people’s souls being far away from him, and his friends mourning over their brother’s death. His tears didn’t show his loss of control, or that he just could not manage to hold himself together. His tears showed his realness, his vulnerability because he loved people. His tears didn’t point to his weakness, they cracked the window so we can see his soul and his commitment to humanity. Jesus doesn’t hold back where we are concerned. He is going to give us everything he has. His truth. His tears. His life.

How can we supergirls offer any less? We are in this thing with him. We are committed to living our lives out in truth and vulnerability and realness, with ourselves and with each other. As for Sister Stoic, she only encourages a facade. It’s all smoke and mirrors. She would like for us to cover up our hearts so we don’t have to share ourselves with others. Remember? Keep the crazy under wraps.

I never did make that phone call to Gretchen to make excuses for why I was so broken. I think I knew in my heart of hearts that Gretchen knew I was broken even before I began to cry. She would have seen right through my excuses because she has a knack for seeking out truth and clarity. And at that point in my life, I needed to be known for who I was. And she was willing to sit with me in that place of pain, cry with me and love me. Just like Jesus does.