crying.

After my host siblings left Cochabamba in October, I spent more than one evening sitting silently with my host mom. I would hold her hand while she cried, and usually I would cry too. The grief in that house in Bolivia was so thick some nights you could feel it tangibly. I wanted to run away from it. I've never grieved like my host parents have had to this year and I had no idea what to do (and even when I did know I didn't always do it).

But I could sit with her when she cried.


About two weeks ago, I was in my Bolivian bedroom staring at the suitcases set out on the floor. I thought about the fact that I was about to fill them with my things and leave this place forever, and I started to panic. I internationally-called my friend Matt, asked him to pray for me, and promptly burst into tears. It's hard to know what to do when someone you love is crying in another country. But he prayed for me, and he listened patiently, and he spoke words of encouragement and confidence in my ability to live the next few days.

And he sat with me, even from across an ocean, as I cried.


Yesterday, my friend Nate spent the day here on his way home from grad school in North Carolina. Nate did a HNGR internship in Ethiopia last year and he remembered the weeks after returning. We mostly just had a blast hanging out around my town and catching up on the last semester, but for about an hour we sat at my kitchen table and he gave me the great gift of letting me talk about Bolivia. I talked about Mosoj Yan, I talked about my girls- for the first real time since getting home a week ago. I started to cry multiple times in that conversation.

I talked about hearing and seeing stories of bodies abused and lives that had been empty of love in a way for which I have no context. I talked, too, of seeing an organization that acted out the words of the Gospel in a way that made changes, and how that led me to hope I don't think I could have gotten to by myself. I talked about Romans 8:28, "For we know that God works all things together for the good of those who love Him", and how that verse doesn't mean the same things to me that it used to.

But at one point I heard myself say something that took me by surprise:

"When I would hear the stories of the girls' backgrounds...it was like He was crying, too."

Seeing the situations some of these beautiful, beautiful girls were born into had me yelling and crying confusion at Him pretty loudly at times. Yelling questions, mostly. I get the concept that His ways are higher than our ways and that's been comforting to me in most of my confused moments... but really, Lord? Really, this is for good? Show me how. I don't see one good thing about this.

When I heard myself say that to Nate, about God crying, it clarified for me a little of why, even with the questions and yelling, I didn't seriously doubt His goodness on HNGR. I would hear those stories and cry and somehow, I knew He was crying, too. I knew that if I was devastated by their broken hearts and bodies, He must be uncountably more.

Lord, I am grateful You sit with us, always. I am grateful You cry.

"...Didn't You see [them] crying?
And didn't You hear them call Your name?...

I didn't notice You were standing here
I didn't know that that was You, holding them
I didn't notice You were crying, too
I didn't know that that was You washing their feet..."

-David Crowder, "All I Can Say" (slightly edited)- I listened to that song so many times this year.