Gasping for Air

They say to notice what makes you angry, and in so doing, you notice what you are deeply passionate about. I’m curious if what tends to make you weep also reveals your uniqueness.

What do those tears mean?

Tears don’t come to me all the time, so I tend to truly notice them. And earlier this week I had a day that I was gifted with tears of joy. Does God still bottle those up all the same?

Being a ballerina growing up means I love the ballet. Only a few days ago, I sat in a poorly lit dance studio with black drapes hung over windows and little dancers perched on top of one another, eyes fixated on those practicing. Dancers with tutus, gently holding the layers of tulle up so as not to hit one another. Other ballerinas helping one another attach their gold covered crowns.

The music played from a small stereo. The dancers didn’t need loud music to make our hearts beat faster because they knew the secret. They would capture our attention with music as their companion. No need for it to be reversed.

The ballet started and she took the padded dance floor.

I wept.

I wept because someone had created something from nothing and now bodies moved together with the music, creating a new world for all to experience. Tears continued to come because all I could see were dancers who had worked tirelessly to perfect their craft to make something for humans to get caught up in something beyond us. And then there was the one dancer, who performed “all out” the entire rehearsal, carrying around his notebook writing down where he wanted to improve. I wept because he cared so deeply for the beauty he was in charge of – the beauty only he could create.

I took note of my tears.

Later that evening, I went to my church and took my seat with Collins, my oldest. We listened as our pastor preached on Hell, and afterward something happened that I might talk about for the rest of my life. I witnessed person after person be baptized. Stepping waist deep into water, being buried underneath it and gasping for air once they came back up.

We all gasp for air when we come back up, no matter how buried we’ve become.

And wouldn’t you know I wept. My voice trembled as I sang on the top of my lungs and watched person after person say “I am His” and “He is mine” and “We are free.” My voice was hoarse at the end of it all because I couldn’t get enough of watching people declare the greatness of the gift they received in Jesus.

I don’t really think I need a formula to help me notice my deep passions, however, I do want to be a noticer of them. I do want to remember that I care deeply about creating beauty out of nothing and choreographing anything to make people feel deeply. I am acutely aware that nothing makes my heart explode more than watching someone live unburied, gasping for air.

And all of it makes me wonder if God has bottles of tears that I’ve cried from my valleys, and if he has tears that I’ve cried out from vats of beauty, and I wonder if we can mix them all up and live a life of passion and beauty and wonder and immense joy.

I wonder if I get to hold them when I enter heaven and if He helps me see what I did in this life because of those tears, stirred up, shaken together. I do wonder, just a little bit, don’t you?