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Okay, it’s true. I cried when old Yeller died. Not the deep, from the gut, sustained crying that comes as the result of the death of an actual loved one, but more of the wipe that piece of dust out of my eye type of crying. No real man cries over something that happened on the movie screen. Well, that’s what I tell my guy friends anyway when we’re at the deer camp. Actually, some of my “guy friends at the camp” hygiene habits tend to make me want to weep, but I hold it in ‘cause I’m tough.
Sure, there are times when the overwhelming urge to blubber comes over me, but I can fight it off and stand stony-faced as well as the next manly man. However, just between you and me, I have gotten off to myself and had a good cry.
My grandmother passed away two years ago and I indulged myself a good sobbing at that time. I held it in through her wake and funeral, for some reason believing I had to be strong in front of the rest of the family. As I delivered the eulogy, however, a tear did manage to bypass my safe-guard mechanism I had installed in my tear ducts.
My wife’s miscarriage of our third child eight years ago nearly got me too. I barely made it to the safety of darkness outside before the tears flowed. The only evidence of a good cry was just some red puffy eyes that were blamed on all the pollen in the air.
Tears of joy flowed unabashedly when I baptized my two oldest children after their professions of faith. There was no safe-guard that could hold joy tears back. My wife said it was good to see me cry because it showed that I was almost human. Well, she wasn’t that brutally honest, but she hit pretty close.
Over the years, it seems as if my willingness to shed tears has become more frequent than in the past. Whether it is because I’m older and wiser, or because standing aloof in my coolness is just too much trouble (my kids laugh when I tell them I used to be cool), I find that crying a tear or too has not diminished my manhood.
God had to have had a reason for providing us with this outlet. It’s just too bad many of us never discover it until we’re old and sour and hardhearted. Just as a merry heart doeth good, so does visiting the house of mourning.
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