The Testimony of Pete Mace
“Whenever you find tears in your eyes, especially unexpected tears, it is well to pay the closest attention. They are not only telling you something about the secret of who you are, but more often than not God is speaking to you through them of the mystery of where you have come from and is summoning you to where, if your soul is to be saved, you should go to next."
- Frederick Buechner
Tears, good tears, are a gift. When I say good tears I don’t necessarily mean happy tears, or the ones that well up in the corner of your eye from laughing so hard that you can’t control it, though both of these are great. Good tears are tears that you need to shed. Tears that open you up and reveal to yourself who you really are. Good tears are a gift from God, and should be cherished justly.
After high school I was jaded and cold. I’d just moved to a place where I knew no one. I’d spent years trying to suppress any emotion. I thought they were signs of weakness. I didn’t cry. It was just a fact; a facet of my character that I had forged to protect myself from the people and the world around me. Crying was for other people, people who didn’t have a hold of themselves.
I found myself at the Wesley Foundation very early. I feel like I’ve told this story a hundred times, but in short, it started with an intern my freshman year named Dasia. She invited me to the Wesley, and, by a few coincidences and run-ins, which to this day I believe was the Holy Spirit at work, I became a frequent visitor of the Wesley. Two days after I first visited the Wesley I attended a campus wide worship service that Dasia had invited me to. At one point the man leading the service asked us to pray over the person sitting next to us. Dasia began praying over me, and it felt as if almost immediately I was broken, crying into the arms of this poor woman I’d barely known for two days, overwhelmed by what I was experiencing and feeling. I never got around to praying for her, and it took the rest of the night for me to compose myself. Fast forward over a year. I was with our Assistant Director, Kaiti Lammert, on her front porch, and she was asking me about myself. She began asking me about my father and my life without him. I was quick to answer that I was fine, and that it hadn’t really affected me. As she began to dig deeper though, I once again experienced an uncontrollable weeping. I was finally facing the hurt and pain that my father’s absence had caused me for almost 20 years.
Recently, after our worship service one night, I went to the back of the chapel and sat with Ryan. I confessed things that had been weighing heavy on me, and asked for help and forgiveness. I cried only when he told me that it was ok, and that the community, and God, still loved me.
I could tell a hundred more stories just like these, and so could almost everyone at the Wesley Foundation. These were not all happy moments, in fact, most of them led to tears of sadness. But just because tears are brought on by negative emotions doesn’t make them bad. I am thankful for every time I’ve cried at the Wesley Foundation, because these are gifts from God. These were opportunities to see my true self, to see all of the hurt and brokenness inside of me, and to see the glory and love that God had in store for me. I know that these are tears of growth, of community, of love and acceptance. Count every good tear a blessing, because if you listen, God will use them to tell you who you really are.
About the Author:
Pete Mace is a junior at Louisiana Tech. He has been with the Wesley Foundation to rural Appalachia and Mexico. Pete is the comedic relief for many of the Wesley events and to know him is to love him.