The Kleenex-Bearers

This may look like a travel size pack of Kleenex to you but it is an incarnation of the love of Christ to me. I have been so blessed over the last few months to be gifted with a close friend who gives me advice, cares enough to ask the hard questions, deals tenderly with my admissions of messing up, and hands me tissues, most of the time a whole PACK of tissues, when I cry.

In our lives we encounter some dear souls who do listen and care and do not answer our discombobulated thoughts with rationality, but instead with Kleenex. They even plan ahead by coming to us with a disposition that they have asked for from God, and listen without encouraging our guilt, and allow God's grace to flow through them, and always remember the Kleenex.

Today, I received a letter in the mail that told me I was legally Cox now, Cox-Johnson no more. And it made me cry--I am alone in my family with a different last name, and it is the right though very painful thing somehow. Pathos all the way---I'm pretty experienced with this pathos thing.

As I got into the car and started off to a meeting down the interstate, I began to weep momentarily over the finality of my name change and I reached into my purse for a tissue...and out came this very pack in the picture, given to me last week by a precious friend as we spoke of Godly things and my holy tears began. Tonight I wept a little more, remembering the good gift of God's immeasurable grace. I pulled out a Kleenex, wiped my eyes and runny nose, and realized there is really no "alone" about it in the kingdom of God. And I praised the One from whom all blessings flow.

The tissues in this blue and pink plastic pouch remind me of that promise in Revelation that there will come a time when death will be no more, mourning and crying and pain will be no more, and when God will wipe away every tear from our eyes. Until then, He gives us incredibly caring friends who bring the Kleenex. Thank you, Lord.