Today I woke up crying. Music made me cry. Friends checking on me made me cry. The freckles on my face that I get from daddy made me cry. Today, I was a mess. Today, nothing had changed since yesterday. I still believed everything God has strengthened and encouraged me with, but I was ridiculously sad. Today was one of those days where I was best left alone, but sad to be alone. Today, I was just sad. Head to toe. Fingertip to fingertip. Along with all God is helping me understand in all of this, is the reality that my dad is hurting. My mom is hurting. I’m not irrational in this sadness. It is totally sane to be sad about what I’m sad about; and I am just sad about it. Always, and especially these past couple of weeks, God has been so good to uphold me through prayers and His peace; I just think today his goodness came to me through the release of tears that had been welling up for days and days and days. The well is about empty now. I had been sneak crying at my desk, and out and out crying when I could step away, trying to discreetly reapply make-up…I cried and cried to the point where it kind of started to make me laugh. May as well.

I wish I was one of those adorable little embroidered handkerchief criers who look lovely in a sundress sitting on a park bench with the sun reflecting off the highlights in my hair as silent tears gently glisten down my soft cheek and the string section sets my sorrow to music. I am not. Once I get to crying I’m a lips swollen, eyes puffy, mascara running, pitching a fit kind of crier. Remember the scene in Hope Floats where Birdie cries when her jerk dad leaves? I'm that kind of crier. Today would not be a good day for me to watch Hope Floats. I probably wouldn't make it. I googled "ugly cry face." And besides a lot of pictures of James Vanderbeek, this picture came up: 






That's about right. This picture was on other blogs. I guess if it is copywrited and they see it here I will pay for it. She’s just mad and sad, and the only way to let it out is to cry it out; hair a mess, exposed. I’m sure she was tired too. There is a picture of my niece that puts this little girl to shame. I wish I had it.

I think back to some of my past cries. The ones where as a child when I didn’t get something I wanted and decided to throw a crying fit. I would get the finger-snap-point and hear "Haley Lougene you dry it up this minute, or I’ll give you something to cry about." I usually got it dried up pretty quickly. My parents weren’t big corporal punishment people, but it’s safe to say I got my share of quick spankings enough that they had their bluff in. Dad asked me one time after I got in trouble for breaking something if I was crying because I had broken it and felt bad, or if I was crying because I got caught and was in trouble. I remember being aggravated that he asked me that; of course because I got caught, or else I would have been crying when I broke it instead of trying to hide it. It seemed like crossing a boundary to make me admit my tears were selfish. Shouldn’t he just melt at seeing "baby-girl" cry, and then take me for a sno cone? I was crying out of fear and manipulation, not out of sorrow. Daddy knew the difference, and he called me on it.

Crying out of sorrow is ok. Even Paul talks about how if he had lost Epaphroditus, whom he loved, he would have had "sorrow upon sorrow." Philippians 2:27. There is real comfort in knowing that our Creator designed us to cry to help release what is hurting, and he doesn’t count our tears or sorrow as faithlessness. "You keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You have stored them in your book," Psalms 56:8. When something is sad we cry, and He is with us. But then, to borrow a line from a friend’s sweet grandma "you can get glad in the same pants you got mad in." We don’t have to live in sorrow. We lift our eyes to the hills, and live in the joy of knowing how the story ends. There will be a day with no more tears. Dad's pain is better than it was, his treatments are started, and they are finally home. I talked to them both on the phone today. I won't take that for granted. Today I had a moment of sad settle in on me a bit. Tomorrow should look better. Apparently, I will probably let you know one way or the other.