When It Is Too Painful To Weep

A widow for fifteen years.  She alone raised her six children by selling bottles she scavenged from the neighborhood.   She has no social security, no dayoff, definitely no overtime pay.  The day she misses work is the day her family starves.  She cannot succumb to weakness.   She cannot allow her tears to fall.  Because if she did, she may not be able to hold them back anyore.  She’d keep on crying with no one to dry her tears away.

 

A child of ten years.  Eldest of four children.  Breadwinner of his siblings, and of a bedridden mother.   He begs at the streets for a living and sometimes pickpockets with his gang.  Playing tough is the only rule he knows, it is the only way he has survived.   Crying is for whimps and for those whose only remaining wish is to die.

 

How tough must you be to live?  How long can you hold back the pain that is gnawing at your heart?   When will it be okey to let go of your tears and cry?

 

Sadly for many people, the time has not yet come.  It isn’t safe yet.  There isn’t anybody yet who can see them through when they finally feel their feelings and face the hurts they’ve been carrying all this time.

 

Sadly for many people, there are more people around them who are far quicker in judging them than in understanding their plight and reaching out a helping hand.

 

And many times, the helping hand they really need is not a few spare coins or a lonely piece of bread. These things may help them for the day or for the next meal, but these will never be enough.

 

You may then say, “I’ll give them more. I’ll give them a small capital to start a decent livelihood.”  But even that is not enough, my friend.  It isn’t enough if you desire to see tears of gladness welling up from their eyes.  So boast not of your gift and judge them not if you can’t see outright the gratitude and joy you’re looking for.

 

Give them time.  Because great as your gift seems to be, the happiness it should have brought cannot be felt until it’s been allowed to enter into their hearts.

 

For a heart that could not weep is a heart that has been shut, and a heart that has been closed could not let happiness in as well.

 

Slowly and gently one must knock, slowly and gently must a heart be opened.  The heart must know that it is safe atlast to trust, safe enough to reveal   its many sorrows and be understood. 

 

And when the heart has wept with all the tears it can possibly give out, when the pain has been faced and the burdens laid down, only then shall it be able to know happiness, only then can it be able to cry out at last with tears of real joy.

Check Jocelyn's books:

"Of Waves and Butterflies: Poems on Grief", "Mend My Broken Heart", "Questions to God", "To Love an Invisible God", "Defending My Catholic Faith", and more - click here.

(You may freely quote excerpts from this website as long as due credit is given to author Jocelyn Soriano and the website itakeoffthemask.com)