Texting Tears and Tossings

Scripture
(Psalm 56:8 ESV) You have kept count of my tossings; put my tears in your bottle. Are they not written in Your book?


Observation
God does three things that only an extraordinarily loving parent would do: He appreciates our lost condition that is marked by our indecisive wandering and tossing about in life; He treats our tears as our shared, sacred treasures; and He writes His own narratives about us in our defense.

• Tossings (The Hebrew word for tossings is nowd, 5112). When we vacillate and are grieved and frustrated by our seemingly aimless wanderings--being shaken, tossed, agitated and lost--He sees and records our struggles to do right and our feeble attempts to find our way back to His health.
• The Hebrew word for tears is dimah [1832], which is connected to the idea of liquor. The heating, evaporating, and condensing--the distilling--of our circumstances produces strong emotions that are not unnoticed or unappreciated by God. He created these funny things called tears and He places His own value on each one of them, apparently with a much greater value than we would assign to them. Being a great pharmacist and psychologist, He knows the purpose and value of each tear.
• The Hebrew word for book is sepher [5612]. The most minute details of our lives are as fully valuable to God as our big decisions. Through His prophet Malachi (3:16,17), God reveals this process: "Then those who feared the Lord spoke with one another. The Lord paid attention and heard them, and a book of remembrances was written before Him of those who feared the Lord and esteemed His name: 'They shall be mine,' says the Lord of hosts, 'in the day when I make up my treasured possession, and I will spare them as a man spares his son who serves him.' "

Application (Personal)
David was a violent man, a skilled warrior, an expert killer both of individuals and of armies. No wonder he needed a productive means of processing the powerful emotions he must have struggled with. Without his expertice or experience in killing, I'm blessed by being able to observe how he put his strong emotions to constructive use. He didn't treat them as another enemy but as a resource that helped him manage the challenges of his life. I, too, would like to have his internal strength and to be able to be as "emotionally naked" before the Lord as he was. That much better than "pulling a stupid Adam trick" and hiding my thoughts and emotionally realities from God (and me).

Application (Psychological)
David stands tall, in direct contrast to how boys are typically raised in most cultures. I'll quote and paraphrase Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen, in her book My Brother's Keeper (pp. 97-100) She discusses psychologist William Pollack and social scientists Robert Brannon and Deborah David's four cultural imperatives for boys growing up in North America today (unless they are lucky enough to be raised in a subculture that doesn't punish boys for such things:

1. Boys must never display sissy stuff. Any display of behavior or emotion associated with the feminine may become an occasion for shaming or even physical abuse. This cultural boy's code dictates that empathy is feminine, religion is feminine, small is feminine, weak is feminine, and showing distress is feminine. Boys are expected to create a network to protect or punish according to this code. Parents of both sexes typically respond with warmth and concern to their daughters' fears and encourage talking as an acceptable expression of femininity.
2. Boys must learn to become a sturdy oak--stable, stoic, and self-reliant. If he can't always be on top of the heap, he should at least "take it like a man" when adversity comes his way. In the movie Lawrence of Arabia the hero demonstrates how he can let a match burn right down to his fingertips. "Of course it hurts, " he says with a smile. "The trick, you see, is not to care that it hurts." This goes beyond merely avoiding feminine emotionality: it's the cultivation of a stoic, imperturbable persona ... a real man never worries about death or loses his manly cool. This appealling distortion of virtue accounts for many mysterious and seemingly impassible conflicts between husbands and wives.
3. Boys must learn to be a big wheel--to cultivate success and status and provoke envy and admiration in others. There are many subcultures where this can be achieved: find one where you can dominate and so you can have followers. Not having followers is failure. This leads many boys to prefer girls who massage their egos, or to abuse them until they, as in Virginia Woolf stated in a memorable phrase, they seek people who "reflect them at twice their natural size." This code stands in contrast to the healing reality of being authentic, safe, and loved while still within one's human ambiguity.
4. Boys must give 'em hell. Illegal violence is officially condemned, even while it is also modeled incessantly in the media and encouraged in boys with a wink and a nod. Boys are urged to defend themselves vigorously when attacked. The line between self-defense and aggression for the sheer fun of it is narrow in theory and often ignored in practice, especially when there is no accountability for one's actions.

In the right contexts and amounts, however, these traits are not inherently pathological--these can, indeed, be virtues that all human beings (male and female) can draw on. These traits can be used positively to serve one's community and unfold the potentials of creation.
Prayer
Perhaps a paraphrase from the conclusion of David's psalm would form the best prayer: God, whose word I trust, whose word I praise, I will trust You and not be afraid of people. What can they do to me when You are the one who truly loves and watches over me? You have delivered my soul from death and You have kept my feet from falling so I might walk before You in the light of life. Thank You for your tender mercies and lovingkindnesses.