Weep With Those Who Weep (1)

A childhood friend I hadn’t seen in forty years greeted me during the halftime of a high school football game.  Among the reminiscences, he brought up some tender memories of my mother, who died at a young age.  Tears pooled in my eyes as he elaborated, but I listened hungrily.  Then he noticed. 

“I’m sorry” he said, then rather hastily concluded the conversation, and departed.  I stood mildly unsettled by his retreat.  I think he was disarmed by my tears, meager as they were.  He appeared to apologize for the sharing that touched me and   triggered a little salty water.  His moving on seemed partly embarrassment about my emotion and possibly over his own feelings welling up.

TEARS.  What Do We Do With Them?  

My old friend, if I interpret his behavior accurately, totally miscalculated my condition.  I was loving the memories he was sharing.  I valued the tender feelings evoked.  I loved the tears welling up in my eyes.  No apology was needed.  The interchange was wonderful.  My tears meant “good stuff”, not injury.  He had given me a gift.  The gift would have been even more precious had he stayed with me face to face, with his own lachrymal glands pumping.

Often people who come to my office, sit down, try to talk, and then struggle in their fight to hold back tears.  They say, “Oh, I was so determined not to cry.  I am so sorry.”  My response usually goes something like this:  “It’s okay.  Tears are good.  Let them flow.  Tears are a gift of God.  Take your time.   Cry.   I love tears.”

“Don’t cry!”

We say it instinctively to little ones.  We repeat it to spouses and friends when they weep.  We shout it silently to ourselves in every troublesome crisis.  “Don’t cry!”  We warn; we suggest; we plead.  Maybe most of all it is a plea that arises from our own uneasiness, feeling like, 'If you cry I am going to start feeling mushy, crummy and out of control.  I hate to feel that way.  So please don’t cry.  I can’t handle it.'

Except maybe when driving a car, I can think of no time where crying is inappropriate.  The “don’t cry” exhortation ought to be blotted out, erased, eliminated.  The words serve no good purpose.  No one should ever tell another “don’t cry.”

Sacred scripture advises us how to respond effectively to a weeping friend.  St. Paul counsels “weep with those who weep.”  This timeless formula deserves heeding.  We rarely do it Paul’s way. 

Our actions say, “fix their problem so they quit crying.”  Or “quote Scripture to those who cry.”  “Tell them to give their aches to God instead of crying about it.”  “Give advice to those who cry.”  But weep with them?  Uh-uh.  Rarely is wound healing done St. Paul’s way — by sitting in the dust crying with the broken hearted, or with a caring embrace, mingling our tears with hers.  We want them to stop when we join them.

St. Paul knows that wounds heal from the inside.  The Band-Aids of advice, quotes, and verses accomplish little more than drying up the tears.  Stopping them is damming the healing process.  The balm of being understood and accepted, tears and all, reaches deep.  Shared tears warm the heart and aid recovery.  The helping person needs to allow herself to feel the watery weakness of the wounded one to really enhance healing.

Other Ways To Weep

Literally crying with another is only one application of Paul’s guidance. A second use of the teaching may be equally useful.  The principle really is this: get inside the other’s feelings.  Feel what she feels.  Avoid standing apart.  Show that you feel her distress.  To put it another way, do not move quickly to try to fix another’s problem.  Hold back your remedies.  Stifle words of blame and questions about causes.

The following is an example to illustrate the teaching: A woman arrives home from her office and exclaims, “the air-conditioning went out in my car on the freeway.”  The response by her husband is of no help—it totally misses any form of compassion.  He says “Well, you better get it to the shop.”  She might come back with a “Duuuhhh” to those words.  Still, what he said is typical, and not unpredictable. 

There is no connecting with her feelings at all.  No co-weeping here, just a completely obvious piece of advice she didn’t need. Simple, minor, fixable dilemmas like the malfunctioning air-conditioner are helped very easily.  The husband could just say, “That’s a bummer.”  Or “oooh shucks.”  Or “You sure didn’t need that, did you?” Or “That’s frustrating, isn’t it?”

Each of these brief retorts makes it clear that the car driver’s feelings of upset are heard, felt and accepted.  No advice.  No criticism.  No trivializing.    No humorous belittling.   No requests for information.   No irrelevant questions trying to fix blame.  Just groans (a form of “weeping with”) — put into words that clearly fit the woman’s frustration.

The woman did not say she was frustrated or upset.  Maybe her tone of voice communicated her lousy feelings.  But maybe not.  She may have made a simple declarative sentence with no emotion.  The good listener, putting himself into the situation, can guess or sense her feelings.  He speaks from what he knows he would feel, or has felt, in breakdowns like hers.  He draws from his own inner history and puts into words a  response  that  corresponds with her feelings — even though she has declared none.  And she then, no doubt, will feel understood and accepted in her exasperation.