TEARS OF LIFE

After fifty-six years on Earth, I have only fully learned one thing: life is strange.

Most people make New Year’s resolutions seeking personal change. I never make them and hadn’t planned on making any this year.

However, change came on its own for me, and it feels more like a new life than a new year.

A few weeks ago, I was driving to work and the sun was shining directly into my face through my Jeep windshield. In the past, I have had several times in my life when I was looking at the sun or moon or stars, and I suddenly perceived them as different… they took on a special meaning to me. I saw them not just as shimmering pieces of light but as something much larger. I almost “felt” them as stars and planets. Well, it happened to me on this morning, only it was on a much grander scale. The sun had become this giant star in the sky. It was no longer just “another sunrise.” There was this magnificent star filling the expanse of blue sky before me, and I felt as if I was a part of both it and all the living things around me.

I suddenly felt the strongest urge to cry. Now anyone who truly knows me knows this is incredibly unusual. Since I was eleven-years-old or so, I can count the number of times I have cried on two hands, maybe one hand.

I immediately tried to repress the urge, and then a thought came to me. Why can’t I cry? I pulled over to the side of the road, and I said out loud, “God help me to cry.” And I did.

I didn’t just cry — I sobbed. I made up for many tearless years.

As I cried, I asked God for one more thing: to help mecry more often. And He did… and a little more. I now cry when I think of my children’s faces and the struggles this life will put before them. I cry when I think of all my wife, Teresa, and I have been through and how we have survived it all. I cry at the sight of homeless people walking past my office window. I cried while rereading an old story I wrote on a Nazi war-camp survivor. I even have begun to tear up during movies.

It seems I can’t stop crying… and I love it. I am totally unembarrassed and completely unapologetic.

When I told a friend, she immediately said it was probably hormonal (“manopause”). I thought about it a bit, and maybe it is… or maybe it isn’t. Maybe it is enlightenment from God. If it is hormonal, then I only wish I could have gone through this about fifty years ago.

If testosterone coursing through my veins has kept me from experiencing the fullness of life that I have now then that hormone (and all the “manliness” that comes with it) certainly wasn’t worth it.

Either way it happened, hormones or God, I accept it and love it. I can feel life.

So, if you walk into my office and find me crying over the beauty of the bamboo plant my daughter gave me for decoration, don’t think a thing about it. In fact, if you take a good look at this beautiful plant, consider its wondrous creation, and feel the life that fills it, maybe we can have a good cry together. Life is so good.

Until next month — hold fast…

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Jim Gibson editor