All this talk about crying on the forums has me about to post something I've been thinking about for a while. I didn't use to cry much, at all. It was incredibly rare, and when it did happen it was usually brought on by anger. I was (and still am) independent, very much my own person, and don't care much what others think of me. I was naturally averse to authority figures, flouted rules whenever I could get away with it (and sometimes when I couldn't), and just wanted to do my own thing without being bothered by other people and what they thought and expected of me.
I had a heart of stone until I was 22, at which point it was abruptly smashed. The pain was so disproportionate to what I thought was reasonable, and I really had no clue why something like that would hurt so much. I also wondered why God let my heart smash, why He didn't catch it when it rolled off the proverbial cliff. Everything that I had previously dealt with hadn't truly hurt. It made me angry, but I had never really felt hurt by something before.
For a very long time, I didn't shed a single tear over my smashed stone heart, even though every one of those thousand pieces ached so badly. I was determined that the situation "wouldn't get any tears out of me." Finally, months later, I have up and let myself cry.
After a while, my broken heart of stone was replaced with one of flesh. One that had empathy, which was something I didn't exactly have in spades before.
I used to be the one thinking that emotional people should grow up, face life, quit crying, etc... and now I was faced with emotions I couldn't get rid of or control. I cry a lot more easily now than I ever did before, and for different reasons, too. My heart of flesh might seem "weaker" in some ways, since it feels, but it also feels alive. And I have discovered that it bounces back more easily than my heart of stone did. It might get bruised, but it will never break the same way.
So eventually I found out why God didn't catch my stone heart those years ago... He knew that it needed to break.
I had a heart of stone until I was 22, at which point it was abruptly smashed. The pain was so disproportionate to what I thought was reasonable, and I really had no clue why something like that would hurt so much. I also wondered why God let my heart smash, why He didn't catch it when it rolled off the proverbial cliff. Everything that I had previously dealt with hadn't truly hurt. It made me angry, but I had never really felt hurt by something before.
For a very long time, I didn't shed a single tear over my smashed stone heart, even though every one of those thousand pieces ached so badly. I was determined that the situation "wouldn't get any tears out of me." Finally, months later, I have up and let myself cry.
After a while, my broken heart of stone was replaced with one of flesh. One that had empathy, which was something I didn't exactly have in spades before.
I used to be the one thinking that emotional people should grow up, face life, quit crying, etc... and now I was faced with emotions I couldn't get rid of or control. I cry a lot more easily now than I ever did before, and for different reasons, too. My heart of flesh might seem "weaker" in some ways, since it feels, but it also feels alive. And I have discovered that it bounces back more easily than my heart of stone did. It might get bruised, but it will never break the same way.So eventually I found out why God didn't catch my stone heart those years ago... He knew that it needed to break.