Pastor’s Corner: Tears

February 17, 2021

This morning as I settled into my office – turned on the lights, started the computer, set the coffee to drip – a child in the classroom next door was crying bitterly.

Sometimes life is hard.

I don’t know what grief was pouring so tearfully from this child. It could have been trivial from my adult point of view. It might have been a fleeting disappointment, a momentary obstacle, or a passing frustration of fancy. Many of our pains are like that: we hurt for a moment, but the feeling soon fades. We have an amazing capacity for healing from emotional distress.

Other sorrows, however, go more deeply and hurt much longer. Sometimes the immediate “cause” of the hurt may seem like it should be trivial and fleeting, but sometimes those hurts connect to one of those persistent pains and bring its ache back to our awareness. In these long months of a global pandemic, the stress has taken its toll as well. We don’t have the same capacity we did for healing from emotional distress. What we shrugged off a year ago has us in tears today.

Tears are, in fact, an element of emotional healing. Contemporary science has repeatedly confirmed ancient wisdom that weeping does us good. Laughter can further healing as well. So does rest.

Within a few minutes, the child was singing merrily away, sorrow set aside. As my mother would say, “All better.” When it’s not all better, though, and tears, time, rest and laughter have not done their work, remember to seek other help. We seek help to heal injuries to the body all the time. Seek help to heal injuries to the emotions as well.

May God speed you to the healing you need!

With aloha,

Pastor Eric

Photo by Eric Anderson