Today's Light | Work Through All the Tears

I always thought crying meant I was losing.

I thought tears were for people who couldn't handle life. People who were weak. People who didn't have enough fight left in them.

Then life sat my ass down and proved me wrong.

During my mental breakdown, I cried more than I had in the previous 40 years combined. Not quiet tears either. I'm talking about the kind that steal your breath. The kind where your chest hurts so bad you wonder if your heart is physically breaking. The kind where you hit the floor because you don't have the strength to stand anymore.

Those tears showed up after childhood trauma finally caught up to me. After decades of pretending I was fine. After losing damn near everything I had built. After carrying around the weight of a little boy who learned a long time ago that crying wasn't safe.

That little boy never got to cry.

He got told to suck it up. Be tough. Keep moving. Stop being a baby.

So he buried it… deep.

For decades.

Until there was nowhere left to hide.

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I reached a point where I honestly believed I just couldn't do it anymore. I had gotten sober. I was working a program. I was doing the steps. I was doing everything people told me would save my life.

And somehow, I still tried to take my own life!

People don't talk enough about what happens when trauma finally decides it's done waiting. Sobriety doesn't erase childhood abuse. Recovery doesn't magically silence every demon you've carried since you were three years old. Sometimes getting sober is the very thing that forces you to meet every ghost you've spent your entire life running from.

After one of those failed attempts, I completely broke.

I ugly cried!

There was nothing left inside me to hold it together.

I cried for the terrified little boy who never had anyone to protect him.

I cried for every version of myself that kept pretending he was ok.

I cried for every year I spent surviving instead of living.

Somewhere in those tears, something happened that I still struggle to explain.

It wasn't therapy.

It wasn't a meeting.

It wasn't a book.

It was a spiritual experience.

It felt like God was sitting with me in the middle of that brokenness instead of waiting for me to clean myself up first.

Looking back now, I don't think those tears were breaking me.

I think they were washing away 40 years of pain that never belonged to me in the first place.

My daughters have barely ever seen me cry. Maybe once. But my wife watched almost every second of those 15 months. She carried me when I couldn't carry myself. She believed there was still a man worth saving when I couldn't find one. She saved my life more times than she'll probably ever realize.

If you're crying right now...

Don't apologize for it.

Don't fight it.

Don't judge yourself because you're falling apart.

Sometimes those tears aren't proof you're losing.

Sometimes they're proof that the little kid inside you finally feels safe enough to stop pretending.

And if you've made it through every day that tried to kill you...

Then great job for trusting yourself enough to stay one more day.

Because you did!

You survived every single one of your hardest days.

Here's the gut punch.

The tears you keep trying to hide may be the exact thing that saves your life.

Let them come.

You've carried them long enough.

Jeff

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