Psalm 126: Artist Statement 

The six verses of Psalm 126 have been a part of my personal journey for several years. There is such beauty and mystery in the lines “those who sow in tears shall reap in songs of joy.” While at first they sounded like a far off echo, I would later come to feel these lines wrap protectively around my heart, like glittering threads of hope as I wept in particularly hard seasons. I have also heard their prophetic cry as I have borne witness to difficult seasons in the lives of others.  

During a season when I was struggling with depression, I sought the help of a professional counselor. She encouraged me to be curious about my tears rather than ashamed, because they often fall in the doorway of a part of my story that needs healing. Similarly, rather than hiding their tears, the Israelites wept as they worked, letting tears fall freely on the open fields. These lines have stirred up my imagination and filled me with wonder about the role our sorrows play in our work, and God’s desire for us to be authentic in our suffering.  

When I found a safe place to expose my tears, I began to see reflections of Jesus‘ care for me in the  midst of them. My tears began to reflect much more than the sorrows that produced them. I began to imagine our tears as multi-dimensional, like prisms, such that when we take a closer look  we see reflections of both our heartache and His. They reflect the truth that our God weeps with us. They remind me that He, too, let His tears fall freely onto the ground at Gethsemane. That He  experienced sorrows upon sorrows on the earth so that He could identify with us. And, amazingly,  He is using our tears and our sowing of seeds for the garden He’s growing, and the city He’s  building, right in the midst of our brokenness.  

For some of the oil paintings in this series, I had a specific portion of the psalm in mind, and I included specific elements which referenced the passage. Others are based on the conceptual ideas I explored, with the “sowing” and the “reaping” occurring simultaneously, because we are, after all, sowing into a New Creation that is both here and coming, and our tears are falling even as our joy is rising.  

The healing that emerged through this journey gave me the courage to pick up paint and palette  knife and “get back to work” in the way that He has called me, and to bring this body of work into  existence as a testimony to what He has done. Creating these paintings felt to me like I was leaning into His chest to hear His heartbeat, and then working with my tools to interpret what I sensed and imaged from that intimacy. I do hope that this intimacy comes across to the viewer. Through this experience I have also become someone who is better equipped to welcome the tears of others.  This body of work is my prayer and my vision for an authentic community that mourns together well, who are among “those who dream”, with the assurance that one day those dreams will grow into a reality of a full measure of joy.