Tears

There are all kinds of tears.
There are tears of joy,
tears of pain,
tears of saddness,
tears of stress,
tears of fear,
and sometimes tears of the unknown.

Tears of joy come when a person is so overwhelmingly happy or full of love that the only thing for that person to do is cry. You might see a lot of crying at a wedding, for instance. Maybe the marriage proposal alone was followed by tears as the bride-to-be willingly said, "Yes!" And I can assure you that nearly everytime a baby is born, someone is crying with joy.

But for that baby to be born, tremendous amounts of pain must be endured by the woman. She may tear up as her body works its hardest to push the baby from her womb. It is physical pain that causes these kind of tears. It's common for kids to run around a lot, going on the adventures that they do. It is to be expected that they are going to fall down, scrape their knees, maybe break something in their young little bodies. When that happens, they may cry. They have been hurt. They feel pain. Sometimes the only release for pain is crying. It doesn't necessarily make the pain go away, but crying just seems to be the thing to do when all you feel is pain.

This brings me to tears of saddness. Specifically saddness from heartache. It is not the same as physical pain. Rather, it is an emotional pain. Say a girl and boy have be dating for quite some time. She starts to fall for him, but without warning, he breaks it off. The girl cries for days afterward. She has been hurt emotionally. Now maybe she was thinking he was "the one," but it never cross his mind about her in the same way. Last night I saw the movie, Love Actually. There are all different kinds of love stories going on at once. In one case, a husband becomes fond of another woman. His wife finds out and cries alone in the bedroom, terribly sad about was is happening. But tears of saddness do not always come from a romance gone wrong. No, after the death of a loved one there is great mourning. At wakes and funerals people cry in remorse over the loss of someone they cared deeply for. This is a saddness that is sometimes lingers. Depression is a rising condition these days it seems. I can't tell you why so many people are sad (as a follower of Christ, I have my own guesses but...anyways), but whatever the reason, I think the tears of sassness are the ones people that people cry the most.

Stress. It comes with work, school, and many other things. It happens when you have a lot to accomplish in a short period of time, or when you have to do the same thing everyday so you can make money. Or maybe it's just every priority of the week running through your head, and you have no idea where you are going to get the energy to do it all. Wake up the kids and get them ready for school, call to make a doctor's appointment for yourself, dentist appointments for the kids, see that they get on the bus safely, make lunch for your husband, get to work on time, deal with clients, sketch out some thumbnails for the designs they want you to do, sketch more beacause they didn't like the first ones, go out on get the supplies you'll need, spend hours on end creating this project, take a short break for food and restroom, continue hours of work on the same huge project, start sketching ideas for the other four clients designs that are dues only weeks from now, leave work, pick up the kids from the after school program, get home, make sure they do their homework, get dinner going, do laundry, unload the dish washer, vaccuum the living room, get ready for company... the list of things to do is crazy and you have to do the same thing just about everyday. On top of this you want to see the kids grow up and want to spend time with them, be a good parent, be a good wife. And then you get to the doctor's and find out you've got something that you need medicine for, or one of the kids has four cavities from eating too much candy when you weren't around. What a world of stress we live in! One day, you just have a break down and start crying. You're exhausted from homelife and worklife and just hit that point where you need to let all of this built up stress out somehow. It's been bottled up too long and now... you cry, sob even. Tears run down your face without any sign of stopping. Those are the kinds of tears that come from overwhelming stress. The world around you is moving so fast and you seem to be stuck where you are.

Fear. You've seen the horror films where something horrible is about to happen to the victim. The victim sees a giant spider coming toward her. She is frozen in place with fear. She knows she's about die. The spider comes closer, touching her face with its hairy legs. Her breath is short and fast as she tries to not make any noise. Tears begin to roll down her face. Scarey situations will drive people to tears. Even the thought of moving on from high school brings about fear. The fear of the world ahead, not knowing what to expect. Sometimes just being scared can make a person cry. Another example is the fear of commitment. People in relationships are scared of the consequences of a wrong decision. Or they've been hurt before and are scared they'll be hurt again. Certain situations in new relationships may spark old memories that cause them to cry.

And finally, tears of the unknown. Every once in a while, something will happen inside me and I just tear up. That happened last night as I lied in bed. I got a little teary and didn't know why. It may have been a combination of some of the previous types of tears I mentioned. Not sure. I wasn't sad... or maybe I was. But I felt happy for sure! I felt fluttery... then again, my heart was tingling in a strange way. And I think I may have been scared at the same time, though I don't know what of. I've been pretty content lately, so I don't think it was stress causing my tears. I don't know if I was indirectly hurting in someway... but I know I was happy overall, whatever the tears were from. A better example is when paeople have a spiritual experience. Maybe it's when they accept Christ into their life. Something comes over them, something indescribable. They are just filled with love and fear and joy and are so completely in awe of God's grace that they fall to their knees and cry out to be saved. Some people cry and they just don't know why.

These are my thoughts on tears. I think what happened to me last night prompted this discussion with myself. Why did I cry? What kind of tears were they? The act of crying in itself is a wonderful and mysterious thing even in the more negative connotations it has. I'm sure the types of tears can be looked into much further, but that's all for now. It took me all day to finish this entry, what with the interuptions and all.