This was originally posted in 2013 but the message is as relevant today as it was then.  

You keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle.

You have recorded each one in your book.

Psalm 56:8

A little girl was crying one day at work.  Silently, with her face buried in her hands, tears dripping down her face and onto the table below.  I tried to engage her in conversation and she wouldn’t talk. The pain in her eyes was deep, maybe too deep for words. I sat next to her, gave her some metallic markers and paper and explained that sometimes, for me, doodling helped when I was sad.  She reluctantly picked up a marker and began drawing and then equally reluctantly, she started talking.

She was crying because she didn’t want to be here.  Here meaning this school, this home, this day, and maybe even this life.  She wants to be at her old school and her old home with her brother and her mother but she can’t because she made a big mistake.  Someone was hurting her and she told someone who told someone and then she and her brother got put in foster care.  She feels terribly responsible for the break-up of her family.  She has been in three foster homes since she left her home.  All she wants is to be with her brother and her mother in their own home and go to the church and school she is familiar with.  I sat and listened to her for a very long time while she cried and talked and doodled.

I couldn’t really do much for her.  Listen, offer Kleenex and try to help her see that she did the right thing by telling. It’s not ok for someone to hurt you.  It’s not your fault you got put in foster care.  I told her I was sorry she was going through this and that I would pray for her and her family and I have and will continue to, but other than that, I am helpless.

I hate pain.  I HATE PAIN.  I hate how it looks on people’s faces.  I hate how it rips our heart into tiny pieces. I hate how it tends to isolate us from others.  I hate how we can take so much responsibility for pain that isn’t our fault.  I can’t help but think that God hates it too.  Why else offer comfort and restoration and a helping hand?   Why pay such a high price to be able to offer us a future and a hope of a life without pain? Why go to such great lengths to tell us of His desire for restoration and healing for our lives if it wasn’t so important to Him?

Jesus, I know You to be the Healer of broken hearts and broken lives.  I know You to be the God of all Comfort and that You are moved with compassion and heal people.  Would you be all that to this family that has been torn apart? Be the Healer in this little girl’s life and touch her at her deepest point of need, bottle up her tears, prepare a place in heaven for her and her family and prepare them for heaven, inscribe her name on the palm of Your hand and love on her as only You can do. I ask in Your name. Amen.

I would love to hear from you. Please let me know if I can be praying for you as well.

pic credit: gettyimages.com