When I was a young pastor, one of the people who worked in the church office was a real crier; I cry fairly easily, myself, as well. In no way am I negatively assessing such a tendency. However, this woman cried so easily that she, herself, sometimes found it upsetting. She would apologize to me and to others.
I don’t know how accurate the memory is, but looking back now I recall that most staff meetings included a significant portion of time in which this woman would cry and we would console. Most often the crying was instigated by an awareness of what other people were dealing with in life.
You hear a lot of this in church leadership.
How is so-and-so doing who was diagnosed with cancer recently?
Has this other parishioner found a job yet?
That kind of thing.
It might be argued that the crying was a distraction, that it did not help productivity. I came to see it as a gift and I told her as much. I told her that many people I knew were not criers at all, and that some of the self-aware ones among them actually wished that they could cry more. I told her that I thought of her crying as a gift for the world, “There are a lot of sad things, and a lot of people can’t cry, but you can, and you do - a lot. When it bothers you, perhaps, consider it as a blessing of others, as a recognition of the general sorrow in the the world.”
Interestingly, this woman was most often able to move on fairly quickly from her crying. She apologized because she felt embarrassed or she felt that she was taking up too much time, but she did not wallow. She was actually one of the more joyful people I have known.
There is a correlation, I think. Some of the happiest, most joyful people are often really good criers. Conversely, some of the most morose people struggle to be able to cry. That is not to say that one is better than the other, simply that we are different than one another.
The Desert Fathers and Mothers of Christian history had a lot to say about tears. It turns out that they had, centuries ago, discovered what I recognized about my friend and co-worker. They actually longed for tears as they felt tears connected them to the humanity of other people and opened a path to joy.
I share this with you in the context of the contemporary compulsion to figure things out and fix them. This therapeutic tendency toward fixing things often applies too easily and quickly to our emotions. While I have no desire for you to feel terrible, I think that certain difficult emotions can be okay, healing even, and can be a way of connection to humanity.
Sometimes, you may not know why you are moved to tears.
Sometimes you might wonder why some small thing made you cry so easily.
There are days when you feel sorrow or greyness. One of the ways forward is to consider that your feelings might not only be yours. I still pray about how my friend, all those years ago, cried on behalf of others, on behalf of the world.
May you know God’s blessing and presence even in uncomfortable emotion.