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…a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance…
Ecclesiastes 3:4 ESV

It was about a month after my husband had passed away, the boys and I were talking, and it quickly turned into reminiscing about their dad. Matthew, my then-six year old started to tell a story about his dad. My oldest son, nine at the time, shot him a look, and Matthew stopped talking.

“What’s up, guys?” I asked.

“We don’t want to make you cry, Mom.”

“Oh, honey,” I said. “Mom’s gonna cry. There is no way around that. I have about a million tears I have to cry. They just have to come out. Nothing you say or don’t say is going to stop that. We need to talk about Dad…and we need to cry.”

As the months continued, I would periodically give them a “tear update”…how far we were into the million.

They are not all gone; I still have more tears to cry, several years later. Not as often, not as hard (usually), but they are still there, and they still need to come out.

Research shows that tears have great value.

Our eyes wouldn’t physically work without them. They keep our eyeballs hydrated, they have an antiseptic value to protect the eye from irritants that enter, and they work to get those irritants out.

Research also shows there is another value to our tears–stress relief. Emotional tears have been shown to purge chemicals from the body that are released during stress, which helps the body get back to chemical balance.

Even Jesus cried when His good friend Lazarus died – even though He knew He would raise him again (see John 11:34-36).

One of the best pieces of advice that I received the week Keith died was from a dear widow friend. She came up to me, took my hands in hers, and said, “Cry whenever you feel like it…in the grocery, in front of the kids, wherever. You need to.”

God made these tears.

He knew they were coming, just as He knew Keith would be joining Him in Heaven…just as He knew that this life without Keith, while hard, would be more than enduring…it would be learning to live again.

I pray that wherever you are in your million-tear count, dear sisters, you can feel the presence of the Lord in them, and that you have the strength to carry on through them.

Dear Father, there are many, many tears in this journey of widowhood. Sometimes it is very hard to cry them all. Please give me the strength to cry when I need to, regardless of where I am and who will see. If Jesus cried tears of grief over a death, then I guess it is OK for me, also. Please help me to not bottle up my emotions, but to understand that all of them come from You. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.