The Flog – The Fabry Log

I married Andrea Kessel on December 18, 1982. She cried that day. At least I think she did. My eyes were pretty blurry as we exchanged vows.

I remember the hotel room six months later. It was on the south side of Chicago. She was curled up in a ball on the bed, weeping because we had no place to stay. We had sublet an apartment from a young lady, north of Moody, and when we arrived with all of our worldly possessions in the back of a 1978 Toyota Corolla (that was a great car), the lady changed her mind. Gave us all our money back in cash in an envelope at a restaurant. Every night there were tears. A few days later we were in an apartment on campus at Moody that had miraculously become available. There were tears of gratitude.

Andrea cried every time she held her newborn children. She also screamed at me and told me never to do this again to her. But then she’d see that little lump of flesh and hold it for the first time and all the pain melted, if only for a moment.

I remember other dark days of tears, when she didn’t think we were going to make it. When she wanted more in the marriage and I had no idea what she was talking about. She had vision through the tears.

She cried when we left our little home in Bolingbrook, Illinois and drove west to see what God would have for us there. She cried over lost friends once we got to Colorado because it took so long to make new ones.

She wept bitterly over sick children and the unexplainable illnesses they had contracted in Colorado. She spent sleepless nights looking for answers on the Internet, working through the tears and finally finding the truth. Tears can help you do that.

She cried the night we vacated out of our house for good. And every night immediately following. Those were desperate tears that seemed hollow and unseen by God.

She’s cried a lot in the desert, separated from friends, lost in decisions, searching for a way.

Tears can draw you close to God. They can also bring you closer together with the one you love. Of course, tears can tear you apart as well. There's no magic in the tears themselves. There’s something underneath them, a well from which they spring.

That well is the heart. Once it turns toward something, an objective, a desire, a passion, a person, it is difficult to thwart. It is difficult to kill. It beats on with purpose. That's where tears originate. Andrea’s tears have watered our marriage. Her heart is magic.

Today we celebrate 27 years together. I’m thankful for the laughter. I’m thankful for the times of joy. But I wouldn’t trade the tears. When they spring from a heart of love, tears can change the world. They can change destinies. They are the overflow of the prayers of worried parents and injured spouses. They fall because we are alive, because we are made in the image of the author of tears.

I don’t pray for tears. I don’t ask God for more. But they come anyway. And I'm comforted to know they are from him and are ultimately for his glory.

I’ll bet she’s wiping one away as she reads this. That’s just the way she is.