I Cried More Than I Expected To

You cried at the kitchen sink about a plant.

Properly. Not a moment of feeling something. The full thing, standing at the sink with the tap running, over a plant that had been in a pot on the sill since March.

And it lasted longer than you expected, and you were surprised by yourself while it was happening, which is a strange experience and not a comfortable one.

And then about ninety seconds after it stopped, the second thing started.

The second thing is the assessment. What is wrong with me. It is a plant. People have real things happen to them and I am standing here crying at a sink.

You are not overreacting, and a person's tears have never once been assessed for proportion by anybody who mattered.

Let me separate the two things, because they are not the same and only one of them is hurting you now.

The crying is over. It happened, it lasted a few minutes, and it is finished.

The judging is not over. That has been running for days. And it is the judging that is currently costing you, rather than the loss or the tears.

So this article is not really about a plant, and it is not about crying. It is about the thing that started ninety seconds afterward and has not stopped.

Put thou my tears into thy bottle

There is a line in Psalm 56 that is almost startlingly physical about what God does with crying.

Thou tellest my wanderings: put thou my tears into thy bottle: are they not in thy book? (Psalm 56:8, King James Version)

Put thou my tears into thy bottle.

Now, a bottle is a container for keeping something. You do not bottle a thing you intend to throw away. Bottling is what people do with what they mean to hold onto.

You are dealing with somebody who keeps tears rather than waiting for them to stop, and crying has never once been treated in that psalm as a thing to be got over. Psalm 56:8 puts the tears into a container for keeping, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a line about a bottle land on a woman who has been judging herself at a sink.

And notice what the verse does not do, because it is the whole of the comfort.

It does not sort them. There is no suggestion anywhere that some tears go in the bottle and others do not. Nobody is assessing the cause. Nothing in that sentence asks what the crying was about or whether the occasion warranted it.

You are not being sorted, and tears have never once been screened for a sufficient reason before being kept. The Holy Spirit is the one who receives crying without asking what it was over, and the written word puts them all in the bottle with no filtering step anywhere in it.

And then the second half. Are they not in thy book?

That is a rhetorical question, and it is asked with a kind of confidence. He is not requesting that they be written down. He is asking whether they are not already there, which is a man who assumes it.

You are already written down somewhere, and a person's crying has never once needed to be reported before it was recorded. The Spirit of God is the one who has already done the keeping, and the word asks are they not in thy book as though the answer were obvious.

The size of a feeling is not a report

Let me deal with the proportion question, because it is the one running.

The size of the feeling has been getting treated as evidence.

The reasoning goes: a plant is small, my reaction was large, therefore something is wrong with the person reacting.

But feelings do not size themselves against the occasion. They never have. They size themselves against what is behind them, and what is behind them is frequently not the thing in the room.

You are holding a reaction as though it were a measurement of the occasion, and the size of a feeling has never once been a report on the thing that triggered it. The Holy Spirit is the one who understands what is actually behind a person's crying, and Psalm 56:8 keeps the tears without ever asking what they were for.

And I want to say something carefully here, because there is a version of this that would be intrusive.

I do not know what was behind it and I am not going to guess. It might have been a hard few months. It might have been that the plant arrived at a particular time. It might have been nothing identifiable at all, which is also extremely common and not a fault.

You do not have to work it out either. That is the part I actually want you to have. There is no requirement to explain your own crying to yourself before you are allowed to stop judging it.

You are not obliged to produce a sufficient cause for your own tears, and an unexplained cry has never once been a cry that needed accounting for. The Spirit of God is the one who bottles them without any explanation attached, and the written word records no reason anywhere in that verse.

Say it once, out loud

So here is the assignment, and it is one sentence.

Say out loud that you cried about it. Once. To one person or to nobody.

I cried about the plant. That is the whole sentence. Nothing after it.

You are able to say a true thing about yourself without an explanation attached, and one plain sentence has never once needed a defense following it. Psalm 56:8 keeps the tears with no reason recorded, and the Holy Spirit is the one present while a woman says four words at a sink.

And here is the part that matters most, and it is what you must not do.

Do not add the qualifier. Do not say I cried about the plant, which is ridiculous. Do not say I know it is silly. Do not laugh in the middle of it.

Because the qualifier is the judging, and adding it means the sentence comes out already sentenced, and you will have practiced the thing rather than interrupted it.

You are able to leave a sentence entirely undefended, and a true statement has never once required an apology to be allowed out. The Holy Spirit is the one who receives what is said plainly, and the word puts the tears in a bottle without one word of commentary about whether they were warranted.

If you say it to a person, choose somebody easy. And expect them to say something small and kind and move on, because that is what people do, and the enormous reaction you are braced for is not coming.