Walking in the Rain

Tauna called me tonight with the terribly tempting suggestion that I skip work tomorrow so I can go to the Twins vs. Indians game in Minneapolis with her tomorrow night. Trust me, it was a very appealing proposition. Today I've just felt this overwhelming desire to run away, and if I didn't have two huge deadlines facing me at work, that game would've been my ticket out of here. I've just been feeling crummy. Traces of some of the things that I was so depressed about last summer have started to resurface. The worst part of it is that I simply can't cry anymore.

It's true. These past few months I have been, as Aroea so eloquently put it, emotionally constipated. Remember my post about how I was in need of a good cry? That was in early February, and not a lot has happened for me there since then, over two months later. I finally did break down the day I returned from my last trip to Iowa, but I have to admit that it was pretty forced.

I know this post probably sounds pretty weird to a lot of you. After all, crying usually is equated with sadness, and who wants to be sad? Why would I want to cry? A few months back, Charlotte and I tried to explain it to Matt on our drive back from a concert. As a guy, he said he just doesn't understand our desire to cry. We explained that it's simply about needing to let it all out. It's not that I want to be sad; it's more that I already am sad about some stuff, and I just need to deal with it by letting it all out. It's a cleansing process. There's this Sara Groves song that I love that goes:

oh, to take off your skin and start over again
oh, to lay on your back and cry
the kind that leaves you puffy-eyed,
bleated with strange peace inside...

the kind that comes to wash your soul,
scrub you clean and leave you whole...

That's the kind of cry that I want, the puffy-eyed, soul-cleansing kind.

On the phone tonight, I told Tauna about my frustration, about how I just want to cry and be done with it already. She suggested I take a walk. I laughed at the idea. It's cold and dreary and rainy and I was already in my PJs. "What do you mean 'rainy'?" she asked. "Is it above 40 degrees? If it is, go. The rain will be good for you. It should remind you of your baptism, and how God is still cleansing you."

And so I went. I put on a sweatshirt, a stocking cap, and my tennis shoes and walked around the neighborhood and prayed. I didn't cry (ha!), but it was still unbelievably refreshing. I prayed through a lot of the issues I've been struggling with, prayed for the people that have been on my heart lately, and as I approached our house, I threw my arms up in the air and essentially prayed, "Lord, I believe; help my unbelief."

He's not done breaking me yet, and I know He never will be. There's a lot of junk inside of me to break down, a lot of places that need to be washed clean. Who knows- maybe one of these days I'll even be able to cry about it.