While my reuniting with my curly-headed one brought me unsurpassed joy, relatives of mine have been besieged with epic illness and chronic conditions without any relief, strength to undergo diagnostic tests, or ability to rest. (Yes, I have had major medical crises as well, in the past years, but not this debilitating.) We hold these two up daily, and wish, pray, yearn for relief for them. The elder statesman of their family keeps the rest of us in the loop as to joys and concerns across the family tree, and as he penned this latest update, he tenderly noted, "Hard for me to think or pray for Tim and Karalee without tears in my eyes. Guess tears are okay." Tears are okay. They are the often unbidden sighs of the heart, whether for joy or despair. Tears show someone you love them or loathe them, cause one to appear mawkish and sentimental or unstable and skittish. Tears speak volumes at weddings, funerals, births, graduations, divorce hearings, and everywhere in between. Tears are okay.
My generation doesn't understand stoicism. We wear our hearts on our sleeves, and most of us have to make a concerted effort to not spout off at the boss, keep our opinions to ourselves, and make a concerted effort to not make our own feelings the motivator for our lives. My parents' generation, born in the Depression and reared during WWII bore the centuries old adage of "Save your tears." I probably have seen or heard my mother cry less than a dozen times in my 45 years, and my dad NEVER let us cry over anything. Save your tears...heh? For what? A rainy day? What the heck?
Does believing in a merciful God mean we must be Pollyanna, or more contemporarily, Kathie Lee; every single second? Does crying for joy or sorrow somehow suggest our faith lacks substance, or worse yet, our God? No. Mary washed the feet of her Lord with her tears; Rachel ' weeping for her chidren' for an end to persecution is a theme in the Old Testament and interestingly enough, her life is also noted in the Quran; Jesus wept when He knew Lazarus had died.
Yet we Christians seem to be programmed with joy as the only acceptable emotion. Don't cry in church, don't complain to your friends of hurts, don't grieve too long or people will think you have no faith, etc, etc, etc. Rejoice in the Lord always and again I say rejoice!! is the mantra of the modern church. Rejoice does not mean smile when your heart is in ten million pieces, any more than you should bear a stone cold face when holding a tiny baby. To coin a phrase, FOR CRYIN' OUT LOUD!!! People singing with beatific expressions can be found on every Christian media channel and in every worship service, as though they had already gone to heaven and skipped along the streets of gold. Are we supposed to appear Prozacked in our faith at all times?? Not so...
The Psalms refer to God keeping all of our tears in a bottle... verse 8 of Chapter 56, in fact. The great Charles Spurgeon wrote upon this very thought,"Put thou my tears into thy bottle. His sorrows were so many that there would need a great wineskin to hold them all. There is no allusion to the little complimentary lachrymators [tear bottles for remembrance] for fashionable and fanciful Romans, it is a more robust metaphor by far; such floods of tears had David wept that a leathern bottle would scarce hold them. He trusts that the Lord will be so considerate of his tears as to store them up as men do the juice of the vine, and he hopes that the place of storage will be a special one -- thy bottle, not a bottle."
Linda Ronstadt covered Smokey Robinson and the Miracles when I was in junior high, the years when nary a day went by without some gianormous dramatic tearstained event. Oye. But I digress... the opening lyrics could be applied to us crying out to God and letting others see the tracks of our tears, not a frozen smile during grief, or stoicism when we want to do a cartwheel. Just as couples recite in wedding vows, we can be authentic in joy and in sorrow, sickness or in health, in plenty or in want.
People say I'm the life of the party
Because I tell a joke or two
Although I might be laughing loud and hearty
Deep inside I'm blue
So take a good look at my face
You'll see my smile looks out of place
If you look closer, it's easy to trace
The tracks of my tears..
I need you, need you
Tears are okay. God keeps track of every single one.
