Why tears should encourage you

For Mama Loves this week, I am linking up an old post. It isn't a product I love. Rather, I love facts, new information about things in life that reminds me of the greatness of God.

I cry easily. My tear ducts are uncontrollable. Really. My husband doesn't believe me. His tear ducts rarely misbehave. If I feel any emotion strongly from joy to anger to sadness, I cry. It was horrible as a teenager. Imagine the message I communicated if someone made me angry and I cried.  Or the embarrassment of crying when I got a C on a test when I was just frustrated that I couldn't stop making dumb arithmetic mistakes. 

My Bird, she inherited my uncontrollable tear ducts (poor dear), and those tear ducts are not helpful on the competitive soccer field. And recently, as I cried with my mom over the loss of my grandma, we lamented the mind-of-their-own tears and how they made our noses run. I joked that God made it that way so we would stop eventually. 

Today, God gave me information that makes me want to scream to others, "Did you know this? Isn't it so obvious there is a creator?" While reading our Mother/Daughter Devotion by Dannah Gresh, Gresh shared some tear facts after we read about Jesus weeping when Lazarus died. Amazing. 

So today I bring you a few facts on the science of tears as a God Bump. Maybe you and your daughter can review these on a tear-filled day while you soak in the fact that your creator gave you tears so you can handle all of life. 

• We have three kinds of tears. Basal tears are almost constant and unnoticeable; they keep our eyes moist and we produce 5 to 10 ounces a day. Reflex tears are safety responses to irritants like dust or onions. And emotional tears form when stress triggers the endocrine system to make tears. Most believe that only humans produce emotional tears. 
• Basal tears are produced continuously in both humans and animals. They drain through a passageway between the eye and the nose. They keep both the eyes and the nose moist. They contain an antibacterial chemical called lysozyme. It keeps both the eyes and the nose healthy.
• Emotional tears have a different chemical make up than basal or reflex tears.  Reflex tears are mostly plain water. Emotional tears contain more protein-based hormones such as prolactin (the same hormone that controls milk production), adrenocorticotropic hormone (produced when we are stressed), and leucine enkephalin (a natural painkiller we make). So emotional tears are a way of lowering stress and ridding our body of biological toxins. 
• If we cry hard, excess tears drain from our eyes through the lacrimal ducts into our nose. The tears mix with mucus and our noses run. 
• Until puberty, boys and girls cry in equal amounts (personality not accounted for). After puberty, women are 4 times more likely to cry than men. Several things might explain this, women produce 60% more prolactin than men. Prolactin triggers the endocrine system so emotional tears are more likely. Also, most women have larger tear ducts than men so they produce more tears at once. 

Simply amazing. 

Sources: Science IQ, TLC Family: Cry it Out
Image: Free extras

Science lesson gone wrong?

For weeks I have watched the chickadee mom and dad fly in and out of the birdhouse just outside the window next to the computer. Birds and nests and eggs are fascinating evidence of God's creativity--how they painstakingly build a home, sit on eggs (how did he think of this device for nurture) and how those ugly hatchlings turn into soft, ornately colored soaring birds.  On Monday we noticed the chickadee hadn't been back all day. Somehow we missed the fledging of the chicks. 


Bug and I did some research. We found a website where a dad risked the dive bombing attacks of the father chickadee and took daily pictures of a chickadees' nest and the development of the chicks. These little darlings grow fast, ready to fly away in 12-14 days. And chickadees apparently nest early and only once, so some sparrows had been fluttering around our birdhouse, considering it as a home but never going in.  Maybe it still smelled too much like chickadees?


In one of those I-will-live- in-the-present-and-be-a-good-mom moments, I suggested to Bug that we open up the birdhouse and examine the nest. I ignored the images in my head of bird nest strung around the house and proceeded. Unlike the photo blog guy, the roof our birdhouse would not easily come off. Bug ran and got a screw driver. I glanced at the clock. Good mom time was over. Dinner needed to be made. I let Bug struggle with the old screws alone.


In passing my determined Bug and her screwdriver, she asked, why does it stink? Pausing, I suggested that one of the eggs hadn't hatched and was now rotten? She accepted my answer because she still thinks I am very smart. While I was cooking the phone rang. Bug got one screw loose. She started on the second. I chatted on the phone, cooked and chopped. Chatted, cooked, chopped. Bug shrieked. I shut off the burner and got off the phone. 


She had succeeded in opening the birdhouse. The nest of moss and hair and feathers looked just like the one in the picture. The trouble? Inside were five rotting chicks, about 12 days old according to the photos. They were covered with pin feathers and arranged, like the blog said, with tails to the center so that they all fit. And there were feasting bugs too. 

This picture, and the one of the nest above, are from
the photo journal of the chickadee chicks we found. The picture above
shows chicks at day 12, about the age of the ones we discovered. 

Our nature lesson turned tragic. And my moment of patting myself on the back faded when I left my girl to discover the dead chicks alone. Still, Bug and I, we have that memory of exploring our little yard and learning a tough lesson. And even though dead chicks make little girls sad, the the nest, the bugs, the pinfeathers, still spoke of the grand schemes of our creator. And both of us couldn't stop staring at the wonder.  (The maggots were gross but we had a great conversation about how God created a cleaning system for nature). 


We brainstormed possibilities. I had seen a sparrow trying to get in days before. Would a sparrow kill the chicks? Or, this birdhouse has a metal roof. It sits mostly in the shade, though the sun shines on it for about 1.5 hours starting about 4 pm. Could the recent 90-degree temperatures on that metal roof have fried the chicks? We aren't sure. But we will be getting a new birdhouse. 


Writing about this God Bump to record this sacred moment for my girl and joining others doing the same at Getting Down with Jesus. 



If you would like to see the photo journal we found, click here. 

Gymnastics Grown Faith

Today's God Bump is a repost from an old family blog. I've left the post alone, as though it was written today. At the time though, it had been months of heartache as my daughter begged to compete in gymnastics. Unable to afford the competitive team prices, and unsure if so much time at the gym was wise, we had said no. Bird was still taking recreation level classes just once a week. 

Sunday at 7:30 am won't find any of us in bed. Generally, I treasure Sunday mornings for their leisure. Bird will probably wake up 6 am this Sunday. We are off to a gymnastics meet. If you've followed for long, you know how much Bird has dreamed about this day.


I've struggled since the beginning of last summer with gymnastics. Clearly my oldest is smitten, bitten by the uninvited bug of gymnastic passion. The sport is pricey and dangerous. But what sport, done intensively, doesn't have a long list of risks? If her ambition was modeling, I would worry and fret about that. I can't stomach the fees or letting gymnastics destroy two or three family dinners a week, not yet. I can't let a sport take my girl away at such a young age. Yet, anyone who studies any sport or art to the point of recognizable success gives many things up, how do you choose when?  I still don't know, but for now, God changed the course I thought we were on, at least temporarily.

I watched Bird all fall and ached. Her flipping, balancing, upside-down passion didn't wane. There were many nights of tears. Bird wondered why God wouldn't let her compete--she had Olympic dreams. She knew He could change her parents hearts and provide the money. She knew multiple girls whose parents let them compete. Every night, since this summer, Bird ended prayer time with a request that God would let her compete. I listened and winced --doubting there was any competition in her future. Sometimes in my daydreams I would get a job so she could compete, or money would come from somewhere and I could hand her, her dream. But even if the money came, I wasn't convinced that so much time away from us (6-12 hours a week) was healthy.


And then there were stories I'd stumble upon in magazines, about girls who quit gymnastics only to worry about the lack of time working out and turn to eating disorders as an answer. I never found answers to my questions, but I found contentment, because regardless of the other issues, the money wasn't there. By December, I think both Bird and I had peace. God was in control. Even if she never competed, this passion and skill had a purpose we couldn't see.


In March, I stopped the coach to let him know Bird loved his class. He's a good teacher and I wanted to encourage him. He's thoughtful too, passing down his daughter's used grips (for bar) so we wouldn't need to buy new ones. Coach responded with, "Maybe Bird would like to do a fun meet?" Fun meets are what kids do in the early stages of competition. They perform routines, get judged but there isn't a state-wide ranking and coaches can be right next to them, helping them stay calm and remember the moves. Generally only kids enrolled in the pre-team competitive programs participated.

Bird heard Coach and started springing up and down while her eyes welled up with happy tears. Hesitant and uncertain, I asked questions. He thought she could learn the routines during her regular training hours. Perhaps she could participate in one meet without much extra cost to us. Almost crying myself, I said thank you and that we would check with my husband.


To my surprise, husband gave a green light. Was it wise to let her compete in one meet? Would it just make her more upset in the long haul? The momentum was too strong now, Hadley believed God had answered her prayers. There was no turning back.

Weeks went by. Hadley learned no routines, but she was planning on this meet. Questions were flying through my mind. I finally stopped Coach, asking him about his plans and timidly expressed my hope that this meet wouldn't be an emotional disaster. He explained the unanticipated difficulty of finding time to instruct Bird one on one with nine other girls in the class. But his plan far exceeded any of my imagined solutions. Bird has now received over five hours of free one-on-one or one on two private instruction time.


I feel indebted to the two coaches who have helped her. I don't really understand why we are receiving so much generosity. Sometimes I go to dark places wondering about alterior motives, but then I remember a big God who heard a little girl and a big God who heard a mother plead with him to make her daughter's faith real, and I know this is one step on the journey. And in truth, I am in no way obligated to this gym, though I do sing their praises regularly.


So think of us Sunday. Pray for us. I will be sitting in the audience, tensing my back and forgetting to breath when the hardest parts of a routine happen. This faith wave leaves me unable to plan or anticipate, grateful to know a God who can provide glorious riches beyond what we can imagine.

It's been two years since that meet. It was the only meet Bird ever participated in. She moved her passion and Olympic dreams to soccer, her dad's favorite sport. For this step in building my daughter's faith, I am grateful.