Number 5: Crying

I'm crying a lot these days, more than I usually cry.

Last time I cried in public was November 5, 2006. It happened at Hope Chapel. I was settling in to preach, adjusting the pulpit, when I looked out at the congregation and saw my friend Chris Mass. He was giving me the thumbs up, as if to say, "Hey, I'm with you," and I lost it. Suddenly I was weeping--not little tears but big, convulsive tears. It was the day after Phaedra and I had broken up. It took me about four minutes to get ahold of myself.

Before that it was somewhere around 1990 that I had cried in front of people. That would be about a sixteen year gap.

But now I'm crying again. I cried two weeks ago Thursday in a counseling session with Kyle. Then I cried, or sort of cried, the following Sunday during a prayer time with friends who had gathered to pray over me and Phaedra. Then I almost lost it at the restaurant with my dad yesterday as we talked about the ending of this season of my relationship with him and mom. And then as I later relayed that conversation to Phaedra I really cried. And I didn't try to stop it. I let myself cry and get that quivering sound in my voice that frankly makes me embarrassed.

I am turning warm-blooded again.

I cried a lot as a kid, growing up in Guatemala. Then I stopped. I no longer wanted to feel the devastating consequences of bawling in front of my new American friends. I was in 8th grade when that happened and I despised the way I was made to feel ashamed for crying. I took a vow and I faithfully kept it.

Now, very slowly, painfully, I am beginning to experience the fruit of renouncing that vow. I still feel afraid, embarrassed, awkward, unhinged, self-conscious and only God knows what else when I cry. But, honestly, I'd really like to give that part of me to Phaedra . . . the Weeping, Vulnerable David. With my body I thee worship.

A VALEDICTION OF WEEPING

by John Donne

LET me pour forth

My tears before thy face, whilst I stay here,

For thy face coins them, and thy stamp they bear,

And by this mintage they are something worth.

For thus they be

Pregnant of thee;

Fruits of much grief they are, emblems of more;

When a tear falls, that thou fall'st which it bore;

So thou and I are nothing then, when on a divers shore.

On a round ball

A workman, that hath copies by, can lay

An Europe, Afric, and an Asia,

And quickly make that, which was nothing, all.

So doth each tear,

Which thee doth wear,

A globe, yea world, by that impression grow,

Till thy tears mix'd with mine do overflow

This world, by waters sent from thee, my heaven dissolvèd so.

O ! more than moon,

Draw not up seas to drown me in thy sphere;

Weep me not dead, in thine arms, but forbear

To teach the sea, what it may do too soon;

Let not the wind

Example find

To do me more harm than it purposeth:

Since thou and I sigh one another's breath,

Whoe'er sighs most is cruellest, and hastes the other's death.