Giving One Another Permission to feel

Yesterday, when I saw this picture of Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, I felt something beautifully uncomfortable about it. Beautiful, because it was a scene of uninhibited feelings. Uncomfortable, because my life has been about inhibited feelings.

I saw this picture, two humans, holding hands, crying - and somewhere in me I longed to be in that picture. And yet, my mind wanted nothing to do with it.

Beautiful, yet uncomfortable.

I am sure this is the case for a lot of men. Many of us have grown up feeling much safer hiding tears, not shedding them. Many of us have grown up believing our hands are for working, not holding. And because of that, many of us go through life believing we are boldly holding it all together, when in reality, many of us are slowly falling apart.

Our mythical strength is actually our own very real self-destruction. A destruction that often takes others down with it.

I saw Federer and Nadal holding hands and crying on the world's biggest stage and wondered, who would they be afraid to cry with? Whose hand would they be afraid to hold? And how blessed are the people in their lives that the answer is likely no one?

We are created to express sorrow and pain as freely as we are created to express joy. The bible tells us God counts our tears; he keeps them in a bottle. God knows our tears tell every bit as much a story of who we are - who we long to be - as our laughter does.

Yet, we are much freer to grant one another permission to laugh than we are to grant one another permission to cry. We will laugh with anyone; we reserve tears for those who invite them. And, for many complicated reasons, many of us are much more likely to run from those invitations to cry than we are to run to them even when we get them.

Over the last few years I've experience moments where my boys cried. It's hard when your boys cry. Life feels better when we are all laughing.

But when they've cried, I've said cry. I haven't wiped their tears, I've asked for more.

Because I've had the chance to discover that when you are invited to cry - and then you cry - in many ways tears bring you to life every bit as much as laughter. I've discovered that the tears I've been holding back haven't been protecting me from life, they have actually deprived me of life.

It's a tough journey from inhibited to uninhibited.

It's a tough journey from uncomfortable to beautiful.

But it's a journey that feels worth traveling.

It's a journey we all need to be more open to inviting folks into.