A Good Cry?
The sounds of crying are quite prolific in my life. I have three children ages 3, 4 and 5, and they all cry. A lot. In fact, I would wager to say that crying accompanies about a quarter of their communication. And they have all different kinds of crying. As their parent, I have learned how to discern – “I want something” cries from “I’m angry” cries, from “I’m hurt” cries, and “I’m not actually hurt but I want the attention you would give me if I were actually hurt” cries. There are cries for when they are tired, and other cries that I am pretty sure stem from nothing other than a profound state of boredom - so many reasons for crying.
As we grow up, we are also capable of this same multitude of reasons and categories of cries – but, we have a lot more “rules” that are imposed on us. Whether they come from society or whether we impose these rules on ourselves, crying becomes far more complicated. As we mature, we learn to control and contain our emotions – especially our tears. While in many ways this is a good thing – we would be in trouble if we all walked around with the emotional freedom of toddlers - sometimes the controlling and containing of our emotions goes a little too far. Sometimes we learn that to emote, and especially to cry, is a sign of weakness. Sometimes we are taught that crying is a sign of something very wrong with us. Sometimes we think that crying is little more than a manipulative tool, or a sign of that we lack toughness, grit and resiliency.
When it comes to our faith and our relationship with God, the messages we receive about crying are rather complicated. I spent over five years working as a hospital chaplain, and so much of that time was spent helping people to untangle the problematic lessons they had learned about tears. So many are taught that if you are a true Christian, if your faith is real, then you shouldn’t feel the kind of emotional pain that leads to tears because you know that everything that is happening in this world is happening according to God’s plan. Why would you cry when your loved one dies? They have gone to be with God. Why would you cry when you have a cancer diagnosis? This is part of God’s plan for your life. Why would you cry when you suffer from physical pain? Don’t you know what kind of pain Jesus suffered up on that cross for you? So many of us are taught that Christians don’t weep or despair, but hold it all in as an outward demonstration of their faith. And if you cry, if you wail, if you yell out and shake your fist at God and at people around you, then your faith is weak, and God won’t hear that noise.
Well, I am here to tell you, as one who has stood beside countless people of deep faith on what they would describe as the worst day in their life, that this logic is nonsense. It’s not only cruel, it’s unrealistic, and most importantly, it is not biblical! There are many times in scripture where God not only meets people in their times of grief and in the shedding of tears, but God actually rewards crying, responds to crying, and Jesus himself cried tears of grief!
In many translations, the shortest verse in our Bible reads, “Jesus wept.” After learning of the death of Lazarus in the Gospel of John and before raising him from the dead, Jesus cries over his friend who has died. He cried, even though he could and would bring him back to life! Numerous verses talk about God responding to the cries of the people. So anyone who suggests that crying is not an integral part of the lives and experiences of faithful people, and one of the ways that cherished Biblical characters communicate with God, does not know what they are talking about.
Crying is actually good for us. It’s good for us physically and it’s good for us spiritually. Let me start with physically, because some of the things I have learned about the science of crying are fascinating!
Did you know that there are three kinds of tears in human beings? The first, and the most simple kind of tears, are reflex tears. This type of tear is made in the lacrimal gland and is almost entirely comprised of water. Our bodies make reflex tears in response to a stimulus. For example, if a bug flies into your eye, or the fumes of an onion begin to irritate your eye. These tears are designed to flush out foreign objects.
The second kind of tears are basal tears, and these are more complex as they are comprised of three different layers, which coat the eye, supply nutrients to the outer structures of the eye and protect the eye from drying out. These tears have antibacterial properties and your eyes are constantly shedding basal tears, even though you are usually completely unaware.
But it’s the third kind of tears that I want to focus on here. The third kind of tears are emotional tears, and these are the ones that have all of the societal baggage attached to them. And yet, these are arguably the most important kind of tears because they affect your health beyond your eyes. Emotional tears actually contain stress hormones – so they literally help flush stress and other toxins out of your body. When you cry emotional tears, your body also releases oxytocin and endorphins which are “feel good” chemicals that work to minimize both physical and emotional pain. Shedding these types of tears makes us feel better and creates a sensation of physical pleasure afterward. Did you get that? Liquid from our eyes helps relieve pain! Now if that doesn’t sound like something designed by God, then I don’t know what else to say about that!
Now I know you are sitting there thinking, Pastor Lillian, that’s more than I ever cared to know about tears! But here’s the thing, I think that one of the most valuable lessons of the entire canon of the Bible, the New Testament and the Hebrew Bible, is that it teaches us that life is full of a lot of ups and downs. Peaks and valleys. Sunshine and shadows. And a lot of time, perhaps most of that time, is spent in between those two places.
That in-betweenness of life, is precisely why crying is not only good for us physically, it’s good for us spiritually as well. Psalm 126 is a good example of when we find ourselves in the in between places. It is the seventh of fifteen Psalms of Ascent, which were sung by ancient Israel as they journeyed from the various parts of the Promised Land to Mt. Zion, where they would meet with God with shouts of joy. Psalm 126 perfectly captures the tension of the pilgrimage, a theme which works for us in so many moments of life.
“When the Lord restored our fortunes in Zion, we were like those in a dream.” Psalm 126 casts our vision back to a time when God rescued God’s people in a way that was so incredible, it was like living in a dream. Then the Psalmist turns to a request, that God will do it again. The Psalmist puts us back in the in-between, a time when things are no longer as good as they once were. This Psalm is simultaneously a prayer of thanksgiving and a prayer for help. “Restore our fortunes, O Lord, like the watercourses in the Negeb.” Now Negeb, or Negev, is a dry, semi-arid place on the margin of the desert south of Jerusalem. It does not get a lot of rain, and it can be hard to sustain any sort of agriculture in that area as it can go 10 or 11 months of the year with zero rainfall. The land becomes dry, hard, and seemingly lifeless.
What is interesting is that for the nomadic folks who have made a home on the margins in Negev to have any hope of survival on that land, they have to prepare for the rainfall. They have to plant their seeds in earth that looks like it has no possible chance of sustaining life. They have to dig ditches to hold water that would otherwise roll right off of the dry land as if it were hitting ceramic tile in your kitchen floor. The act of planting and living in this region is forever an act of faith, preparing and praying that the rains will come, and that they will be enough to allow survival.
“Restore our fortunes, O Lord,
like the watercourses in the Negeb.
May those who sow in tears
reap with shouts of joy.
Those who go out weeping,
bearing the seed for sowing,
shall come home with shouts of joy,
carrying their sheaves.”
We have a lot of moments of in-between, where our lives resemble the dry desert. Where we are parched, thirsty, and it feels hopeless that new life will find a way. We all have times where the only water to be found is what flows from our tears. And yet, the Psalmist is reminding us that what God has done for God’s people, God WILL do again. And so we must continue to sow into the dry, desert ground. The Psalmist reminds us that we will weep when times are hard, but as we weep, we still have faith – the two are not mutually exclusive.
And in the meantime, the weeping makes us feel a whole lot happier and healthier.
So, I ask you. When was the last time you allowed yourself to have a good cry? We all have pain, and grief, and loss, and all of those have been compounded and exacerbated by many different world events in recent weeks. Have you allowed yourself to let it out? To let the tears flow? When we talk about self-care, we usually include things like making time for sleep, for exercise, for healthy eating, reducing alcohol consumption, and so on, but maybe we should add in making time to weep. Perhaps we all need to reclaim the practice of our Biblical ancestors and of Jesus himself, and have a good cry when our spirits and our bodies tell us that’s what we need.
I want to leave you with some words by Frederick Buechner that capture what is so truly sacred about the act of crying.
Tears:
YOU NEVER KNOW what may cause them. The sight of the Atlantic Ocean can do it, or a piece of music, or a face you've never seen before. A pair of somebody's old shoes can do it. Almost any movie made before the great sadness that came over the world after the Second World War, a horse cantering across a meadow, the high school basketball team running out onto the gym floor at the start of a game. You can never be sure. But of this you can be sure. 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. -
The oh-so frequent tears of my three little ones remind me that they need me. Maybe our own tears remind us that we need God, and each other, to navigate our highs, lows, and many, many in-between times.
Amen.
