Crystal Moments

I started leaking in church yesterday.

During worship. I was sitting … and then standing … and singing … and then I was crying.

Not boo-hoo, wailing tears, but the silent kind that slip down your cheeks in a river and slowly soak into your clothing. Drip. Drip.

I wasn’t sad.

The moment was simply perfect.

To my left sat my precious husband, calmly giving me a handkerchief and a hug, always prepared, offering comfort and support and understanding. To his left sat one of my sons, focused, intense, handsome. If I were younger, I’d find him irresistible. He looks like his father.

To my right sat my daughter, trembling with the pent-up electrons of energy that remind me so much of her older brother at that age. What a jewel she is.

To her right, riding herd on the potential energy, sat her oldest brother. For the last time. Tomorrow, he will soar away from this nest like the mighty eagle he has become. I am so insufferably proud. Oh, to be young and have all of those adventures ahead of me!

They were not tears of sorrow, well … not exactly. The sorrow was in the inability to capture that moment. Time slithers through my fingers and off into the oblivion of age.

Then I started to think about eternity and how we are eternal creatures, dropped into this world like players in a video game. Some day we’ll emerge into the light shaking our heads and laughing, comparing notes, and then we’ll sit down with God and review our lives.

There is a verse in the Bible that tells of how God stores all of our tears in a vial.

I know that He will be saving those tears. He’ll hold them up and we’ll exclaim over their beauty, for they were crystalline, precious jewels.