Tears

When a woman cries, what does it mean? Once I was stopped for speeding in Georgia. I explained that I was “driving with the traffic” and that it would have been dangerous to do otherwise, but it didn’t help. A county with one of the highest incomes from traffic tickets would not budge. Because there was no reciprocity with a CA license plate, they hauled me in to the local jail. It was a strange place. “Just go to the window and pay up.” Seemed simple, except that I didn’t have any cash and that was all they would take. They refused credit cards. “Now what?” I asked. “You’ll just have to stay here until someone you know can bring cash.” I looked at the bars of one of the cells and chuckled slightly.” “I don’t know anyone who lives close.” They were not amused or moved by my plight. They simply repeated their previous statement. “You’ll have to stay here until someone you know can bring cash.” Suddenly I realized that they were as serious as the name on the building implied. I walked around the waiting room, then burst into tears. I was laughing and crying all at the same time. This was something out of the twilight zone! It was hilarious. It was not funny at all. And so the tears came. I was literally in a place that I did not know how to get out of.

Later, as I looked back on this experience, I was most interested in the tears. Why tears? Why not anger, embarrassment, regret, fear? Then I realized that the tears said it all. They said everything that I could not put into words. They explained that I was feeling several emotions all at once. They explained that I was afraid and did not know where to turn, and that yes, there was a strangely funny aspect to this weird experience.

When I was in high school and found the teacher calling on me before I was ready to respond or didn’t have an answer, I often felt my face turn red and tears well up inside. “Don’t do this now,” I would tell myself, because it won’t help! It will only make matters worse.” Of course, the issue of looking bad for the next couple of hours also did not thrill my teenage soul.

Tears. Men are confused by them; some are moved (policemen) and others are not moved at all (policemen). I once became a little teary in a Sabbath School, quietly, as the teacher talked about difficulties and I was reminded of my friend who struggled with breast cancer. Being a visitor, I wanted to wait until the others left so I would not be noticed. I was successful until one person came up to say hello, noticed my tears, then quietly excused themselves. A second person was quickly clearing the chairs for the next event (before the room was clear), noticed me struggling with tears and left me and my chair as an island in the middle of the room. I wanted to blame them all for being so unkind to a visitor, but I was as uncomfortable with the tears as they were. How could I blame them?

Tears. They come unexpected and leave at the sight of kleenex. Sometimes they come with laughter and other times obscure it. Sometimes they mean one thing, sometimes many. At other times, we have no clue what they mean and that frustrates us all.

One thing is for sure. They bear a truth. Some kind of truth, whether or not we know what that truth is. Even if they come from one who has had a stroke and some suggest that “the tears do not mean anything,” they bear witness to the injury itself.

I do not cry as much as I used to. Now I have words to explain the variety of feelings that I have and tears seem to be less necessary. But when they come, I appreciate them. They cleanse the soul as they bear witness to a truth.

“Jesus wept.” The shortest verse in the Bible says so much.

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