Tears, first of many, many posts

"The way of tears, while not seeking pain for its own sake, is a willingness to be continually confronted not only painful truth about one's self, but also seeks to know this truth on a universal level of human suffering. This compassion mirros the kenotic God's willing interrelatedness and self-limiting power that comes from choosing to be related to creation."  Ross, p45 in my book.

My mother tells me I was a happy outgoing child and I know that my adolescence contained little outgoing and questionable happy. My mother says that I did not cry all the time as a child - and indeed I don't remember excessive bouts of crying as a child. But I do remember these at various times in my adolescence. I've spent a lot of time and money connecting these various bouts to a theory of anxiety and depression and an image of myself as someone who is anxious and depressed (the very fact that I don't see myself as depressed is often my own reasoning for my depression).

In particular, I recall my first mission trip, those ridiculous things that the leaders of which are really quite unprepared to help people navigate in anything but the most superficial way. We went to Baja, and into a shanty town, and I cried and cried and was on the bus the entire time. And even then, I did not feel what people were telling me I was feeling. I  wasn't shocked by the state of housing (I have lived in a house with no actual floor and a tin lid for a roof) not considering my upbrining to be suburban middle class confort, I was not shocked to find people living with out running water and electricity and all those other creature comforts that are so much more work than we realize.

I wonder, had I been with some adult supervision besides some comfortable middle class suburban folk intent on bringing some feel good - gratitude - attitutde to their children, if someone would have recognized those tears for what they were. I am pretty sure that even now, I would not necessarily be able to see the working of God in some awkward 13 year old. Even more, even today, I am not sure how I would help some awkward 13 year old incorporate such an event into their own world view.

I wonder, now and again, if being raised by the Catholics instead of the Baptists in my family, might not have brought me through my faith journey with considerable more ease. If nothing else, my experiences in a more catholic faith have certainly been broader than I got as a baptist.