No More Tears

My brother was a United States Marine for four years. He went from being a guy in pretty good shape to one big, burly man.
On the outside.
He told me once that he had gotten bored one evening and had gone to the NCO club to see a movie with his buddies. It was some tear jerker movie and he was surrounded by guys who watched the sad scenes without any show of emotion. My brother however, had a major struggle, trying to keep from crying. He told me later, "I sat there and swore under my breath and thought of everything I could to make me mad so I wouldn't cry. But the tears kept coming down my cheeks and I felt awful with those other guys sitting there."
He didn't think they saw him crying, but he couldn't be sure.
You see, he embodies more of the Italian blood in our family, and thus is more easily overwrought by emotion than the rest of us.
The men in my family have always been softies: they always kissed each other good-night, hugged each other hello and goodbye, and cried great tears when we saw movies together or during sermons. I grew up thinking that this was just the way men were supposed to be. Imagine my shock when I encountered men who only shake hands, saying "See ya..." and mumble "yeah, me too" when you tell them that you love them, and have nothing to say about their feelings. Cardboard souls. That's what I thought abot the men of the world who are like this.
Of course, my father and mother used to sit side by side at night watching television, both having a good cry about just about anything they saw on TV: Kodak or telephone company ads, compelling stories on Oprah, or those documentaries about animals like the elephants who never forgot their elephant friends even after 40 years of being separated.
(oy, jt gives me a lump in my throat now to even think of it!)
But there would be Mother and Daddy crying their eyes out.

My sister used to taunt me if I ever cried in her presence. As a result I probably became the most stoic of all four of us children. She has a hard time identifying her feelings, so she rarely cries. I'm a therapist who is trained to feel more and to feel more deeply--not only that, but to be aware of what I'm feeling and to name it in as many different words as exist. But I've always been pretty shut down with my tears because it takes a great deal of trust to cry in front of someone else--trust that I generally have not had for too many people. I suppose that it also had something to do with living so many years with no one to cry to or with. I learned to put it aside and do what needed doing instead of crying.

Recent developments have had me crying more than I ever thought I could. It seems that some of the frozen up tears that never made it out are finding their way to the surface these days. Even though Sam isn't what I'd call an emotions kind of guy, he is usually receptive and supportive of me and my emotions. He calls during the day to see how I am feeling and what I'm thinking about. It matters to me more than he knows. So it makes sense for me to cry more now because I'm not alone with my sadness and I won't be as likely to be overwhelmed as I would have been for so many years.

In her book, "If I'm so wonderful why am I still single?" the author, who was a campus chaplain at a big university in the San Francisco area, explained that she too, started crying all the time after she got married. She was shocked and so was her new husband. I'm glad she wrote about this, because otherwise, I would feel nutty.

For example, I attended the funeral of a 95-year old mother of a former boyfriend on Saturday. When I walked in and sat down, I saw a beautiful picture of her with her husband--whom I absolutely loved. I couldn't stop crying through the whole service. The amazing thing is that I wasn't crying about the woman or her husband. I was crying about all the things that I'd held back for years regarding the boyfriend's death and the circumstances that had been so painful. I had just set my face as a flint, so to speak, and had kept going. It all flooded over me as I sat there and I was totally unprepared for it. There is still another pint or so of tears inside me about that situation, but it was very surprising to have such a different response than the stoic emotionless affect that I usually have.
Perhaps it is also a function of age. My father, and a number of men in their 80s whom I know, cry when they talk with me. One older man will tell me jokes and yet if he says anything serious to me, a tear will suddenly slide down his cheek. Maybe he is thawing out from something pressing now, too. Maybe it is the let down from years and years of shouldering responsibilities for the family, his church, his job. Now it is safe to cry, to feel.

In Revelation 20, we are told that God will wipe all tears from our eyes. I wonder if there will be a period of time when we weep and grieve first--when our sadness wells up and all the emotions that accompanied so many things that we couldn't express at the time--roils to the surface. Maybe when we see the reward of those who aren't in heaven. Now there' something to cry about. I don't think for a minute that we will be without feeling over the eternal loss of some of our beloved family members and friends whose choices and resistance to God have placed them in opposition to Him.
Perhaps the joy of being in the Holy City or presence of God will be so overwhelming that there will be no sadness in that kind of place. That's something that is very hard for me to comprehend.
If we were to have tears in heaven--even initially--it would make sense to me with my earthly reasoning powers. There will finally be someone there who can truly comfort and relieve our sadnesses from this earth. Why wouldn't our tears be spent in the presence of God who fully loves and accepts us?
I don't know. Finding out is something to look forward to for melancholy souls like me.