I am a crier—and I’m not talking a cute crier…. I am an ugly crier—a snotty, sniffly, can’t talk crier. I am not the “cries at weddings and touching movies” kind of crier. I am a “cries at the most inappropriate and inconvenient times” kind of crier. It is something I have wrestled with my entire life. I literally go into situations that I know are risky and try and psych myself into keeping my eyes and cheeks dry. I rehearse what I am going to say without crying so that I can enter the conversation without crying. And what happens? You guessed it: I cry!
This is something that has haunted me since I was a young child. I have always been very sensitive and hard on myself. I cried at sleepovers. I cried when I received criticism from coaches. I cried when I got a wrong number. I cried when I accidentally cut someone off in traffic. I am and always have been a crier.
For a long time, I believed the lie that my inability to hold back my tears was a sign of weakness. And along the way, others reinforced these beliefs.
When I met with a boss to talk about the next steps in my career, I cried, and he took that to mean that I wasn’t strong enough to enter the next level of leadership.
When the wife of a well-known pastor came and spoke at our seminary about why women should not lead in the church, and I dared (through my tears) to challenge the idea, her response to me was that my tears revealed that my identity was way too tied up in my ministry position.
When I tearfully insisted on a policy that would ensure safety for the children of our church, I was subtly told that those tears indicated that my personal involvement prevented me from being objective.
You see, there are some tears that seem to be acceptable in our society. It is acceptable to cry when someone dies or when a friend is hurting. After all, when Jesus saw the pain that Mary and Martha experienced at the death of their brother, He wept! And He wept knowing full-well that He was about to raise Lazarus from the dead. People understand tears in situations like this. In fact, they expect these kinds of tears. They worry if someone doesn’t cry after a major loss or trauma. These tears are okay. They are acceptable.
However, there are times when tears are seriously frowned upon. It is “NOT okay” to cry with your more stoic family members if it may make them feel uncomfortable. It is “NOT acceptable” to cry in front of a kid’s teacher. It is “NEVER appropriate” to cry at a staff meeting or with clients. The tears I cried in all of those situations mentioned above and so many more have fallen into the “socially inappropriate crying” category. And yet, here I am tears and all!
I will never forget a coffee I had with an older, wiser friend who was on my ministry staff after that heart-breaking interaction with my boss. As I explained the interaction (obviously through tears) I suggested that maybe he was right. Maybe my lack of a Y-chromosome and my inability to control my tear ducts truly were evidence that I didn’t have it in me to be a leader. I will never forget what came next. She looked me in the eye and said:
“Allie, that is a lie! Can you think of a man that we know that cries all the time?”
Well, it didn’t take me but 3 seconds to say,
“Well yes, TK!”
You see, my friend and co-worker TK was one of the most highly respected leaders in our organization and also one of the most passionate followers of Jesus any of us knew. And TK cried just about every time he talked about Jesus. His tears were not the result of trauma or of mourning the loss of anything. His tears were the evidence of his deep, genuine, overwhelming passion for his Lord and Savior. I honestly believe that TK’s enduring effectiveness in ministry is intimately connected to those tears.
That moment changed the way I saw my tears from that point forward.
When we think of Jesus’ tears we usually think of the moment at the tomb of Lazarus, or of Jesus is the Garden of Gethsemane. But do you realize there is another moment where Jesus is found crying in the Bible? In Luke 19, Jesus is on the move after his memorable interaction with Zacchaeus:
“As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes. The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you.” (Luke 19:41-44 NIV)
Jesus cried tears of brokenness. He cried when He looked at a situation that could and should be different. They were tears rooted in the heart of the Father. They were tears rooted in sadness over sin and a yearning for all of creation to be redeemed. Those tears said way more than words ever could.
When TK would cry while talking about Jesus, the tears were revealing a deep desire for Jesus’ work to be effective in the kid or hundreds of kids he was speaking to. His tears were a bold and powerful illustration of how we should long for the return of Jesus when all things will be made new.
Because the truth is: our tears do not reveal our weakness. They are a sign of our conviction, our passion, our strength!
As I come to grasp that fact again and again, it reframes those moments in my life where I felt that my tears disqualified me.
My tears with my boss were not evidence that I couldn’t do the job. Rather, they were there as evidence that I knew I COULD do that job and in fact, I was confident I could do it really well.
I voluntarily shed those tears following the words of that pastor’s wife, because I looked around that room at countless women who were seeking truth and guidance about their place in this world and in ministry and I just could not let them believe that their options were so limited.
My tears in that church context were for the children, my children, my friend’s children who deserved more than anything to be safe within the walls of our church.
Out tears do not reveal our weakness. They reveal the very heart of God.
When one of my closest friends went to her first meeting of a new small group, she found herself feeling internally humiliated when she started crying as she answered the question being asked. All she wanted to do was run away and hide. But at that very moment, another friend spoke up and in love and boldness said the most true four words there ever were: “Your tears are beautiful.” Her tears WERE beautiful. Our tears ARE beautiful. Don’t you ever believe anything else!