All your tears...

     In the beginning, they never stopped.  I actually couldn't understand how I could shed so many tears.  It took nothing to make them start.  A word, a song, a memory, a comment, a photo...everything brought on tears.  After many weeks, I couldn't believe they would ever stop.  And they haven't.   They slowed.  There not as frequent, but they still come.  I cry the most these days in my car.  On the way to school or a tennis match.  I know that may seem odd but these are the times when I called Mom. Always, every day.  That was our routine.  On my way to and from school.  To see how her night was and check on how she felt.  To hear what adventures her day held, quarter bingo or a craft project or a visiting music group.  "They're very nice but they're getting older and she really can't hit the notes anymore, but I go to show my support."  And then I'd call on the way home.  "Did you win today?  How was lunch? What did y'all eat?"  Nothing special.  Just each of us sharing in the other's ordinary.  But oh how I miss those conversations.   On the way to tennis, we'd talk about the match, who I would be playing with, where we were playing.   And always after to tell her the details of the, hopefully, win.  Mom had played tennis in her younger years and she still understood the particulars of the game.  In fact, her father had built them a dirt/clay court next to their home when she was a teenager.  It was just another mundane thing that added to our bond.

  Now, there is no one to call.  So in the silence, I weep.  Weep is a better word than cry.  We may cry in joy, but we only weep in grief.  Some one told me once that the composition of tears shed in grief differs from all other tears.  So, of course, I googled.  Turns out, my friend was right.  

      Rose-Lynn Fisher wondered if her tears of grief would look different compared to her tears of joy, so she began to explore them up close under a microscope. She studied 100 different tears and found, for example, that the ones our body produces to lubricate our eyes are drastically different from the tears that happen when we are chopping onions. The tears that come about from hard laughter aren’t even close to the tears of sorrow. Like a drop of ocean water each tiny tear drop carries a microcosm of human experience. Her project is called The Topography of Tears.  Interestingly, emotional tears have protein-based hormones including the neurotransmitter leucine enkephalin, which is a natural painkiller that is released when we are stressed. It's like when we shed tears of grief, our tears act as numbing agents against the pain.  Plus, the tears seen under the microscope are crystallized salt and can lead to different shapes and forms.  (Information retrieved from http://www.lifebuzz.com/tears/).

This is a picture of the tears shed in laughter:

This is the photo of tears shed at a joyful reunion:

And this is a picture of tears shed in sorrow:



All these tears and all these chemicals are amazing to me.  But even more amazing is the scripture that states that God records every tear shed.  

 "You keep track of all my sorrows; 

You have collected all my tears in Your bottle; 

You have recorded each one in Your book"  

-Psalms 56:8 (NLT)

I can hardly wrap my mind around that.  God knows every tear I've shed and those yet to be shed.  In my car, I'm not alone.  God is there listening, counting, collecting, and recording.  He made these tears to be different.  So, I will continue to weep with no shame knowing that these tears were divinely designed to help me heal.