I listen to her ceaseless tears and I watch her cry, twist and yank the heavy covers over her dark, shiny and tossed hair. She aches for the children she doesn’t nourish with her motherly milk, the babies she never wraps up tightly in a swaddling cloth, and the hearts she doesn’t get a chance to encourage, comfort and help mold. 

She mourns.

She weeps.

She laments.

Everyone understands it when the tragedy first lays down it’s heavy wooden cross; another pregnancy lost, another heartbeat stopped. The people come rushing in with flowers, meals and downward turned faces that quietly reveal their sympathetic souls. 

But as the days, the weeks and months go by the unspoken message can be heard like a blaring trumpet “Time to move on, you have nothing left to cry about. You have four beautiful children running around your lively house, so stop weeping for the five little souls that only Christ now gets to hold.”

Tell that to the woman whose eyes see the tiny hands and feet of the little ones who would have been her child’s peer. Whisper those words to the heart of the momma who listens to her preschooler beg for a “real live baby” to hold and cherish.  

Or how about the tears I’ve seen pour down from the single grandmother left stranded by the man who vowed to love her forever over 30 years ago. She mourns over the life she once knew, the traditions now broken, and the family now fragmented. 

But once again, as the years begin to multiply her weary heart hears the silent words left behind by the people on the outside. “It is what it is, so wipe your tears and move on!”

This idea that tears have an expiration date breathes lies into the hearts of the women whose souls throb with pain or ache with a deep sorrow.

Yet, maybe you are one of the few that doesn’t put a time limit on tears. Maybe you can read these words and sympathize with a moved heart saying “No, no, Suzanne I can understand why these women cry, why they weep!”

But what about the momma I’ve seen well up with tears of exhaustion over the hours of middle school homework, the meals to cook, the bills to pay, the sleepless nights tending to a baby and a house with layers of sticky gook she can simply never find the time to cut through? 

Should she not weep? Should she shove down her weariness and simply brave a face for all the world to see that screams “It’s fine, it’s fine, everything’s fine- My life is good, I have nothing to cry about! ”

We live in a broken inward facing world where people frequently search for something to fuss and roar about. We wave our little “I’ve been wronged” flags around expecting the people nearby to flex and mold in order to repair the cracks left by the injustices we feel. 

Yet, as followers of Christ we can often see this disorderly function of the sue-happy world we live in and conclude: “I KNOW God is good, I KNOW He adores me, I KNOW His will is supreme, so I should find joy in Him and KNOCK IT OFF with all these tears!” 

But this my friends is where we dishonor our good and glorious God by not allowing him into the most vulnerable, naked and exposed parts of our souls. The enemy loves to feed off the shame we feel for mourning “too long”, weeping “unnecessarily”, or for simply aching over a day’s hard work that has left us weary and deflated. But we must not fall into his sneaky trap.

For God, who is described as the Father of Mercies, God of All Comfort,  (2 Corinthians 1:3) and God of Hope (Romans 15:13) is the same God who ….WEPT (John 11:35). After the death of Lazarus, not only did Martha and Mary weep but so did Jesus. Jesus, who knew that He would raise Lazarus from the dead, who knew He would spend eternity with his friend, and who knew there was greater work at hand, WEPT.  

Jesus called Mary, who was weeping by her brother’s side, to come to Him. Jesus, all knowing, knew she had been mourning, and weeping in a pit of tears. Yet, He invited her to come to Him and met her right there in the depths of her lamenting sorrow and …He …WEPT. Similarly, God doesn’t ask us to muffle our tears, hide our afflictions or quiet our wails. Rather, He invites us to come to Him so that He can meet us in our pain and weep by our sides. He opens his arms and wants to absorb all of our tears and lamentations. 

But friends we must be careful, because this is not an open summons to walk around complaining and whining with our hearts turned away from our Heavenly Father. Instead, it is an invitation to free our souls from the unwarranted shame of our pain and turn our tears towards our Lord. There is a beauty that transcends over the darkness of sorrow when it pivots our souls to gaze upon our Lord. Anne Voskamp said it beautifully, “Lament is a cry of belief in a good God, a God who has His ear to our hearts, a God who transfigures the ugly into beauty. Complaint is the bitter howl of unbelief in any benevolent God in this moment, a distrust in the love-beat of the Father’s heart.”

When we lament and turn our vulnerable, exposed, sorrowful and even angry hearts towards our Lord, it transforms these tears into a beautiful prayer. This honest prayer deepens our intimate relationship with Christ and then moves our souls towards a HOPE that lies with only God himself. 

So maybe, just maybe, when you see her eyes about to pour out like a river overflowing, or feel your own heartbeat move with a rhythm of sorrow, you can wipe her tears, lean your heart upon our Lord and remember that “Yes, BIG GIRLS DO CRY!”

~Suzanne Bilodeau