She doesn't cry....

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It was sad... all that she said in prison last night. It was hard to know what to say back to her. Some times answers aren't easily given. Some times solutions don't want to be heard. Some times people just need to spill, they only need you to listen. I think tonight was one of those.

We were talking about "adult children"....  Adults that never had a childhood due to the dysfuntional family they grew up in. She told us that that's what she was. She had "every trait in the listing. Pick one. Pick all of them. Every one of them has my name on it and defines me."

She said she doesn't cry... and that she hasn't cried for years. She doesn't know how to. And she's afraid to, even if she did. She wasn't allow to cry as a child. It wasn't permissible. And so now, she won't allow herself. Ever. For any reason. For anything.

She was mad when she said it. She was mad. She was mad. She was mad! She was so mad! Bitter that her tears had been stolen. Angered over the feelings that no longer have feeling. She'd gone through so much. And add to a rough childhood, she was military, she'd fought in a couple of wars. She watched friends die. Bunkmates get blown up. Bullets splattering all around her. She didn't cry then either. And, she said, that she doubted that she'd ever cry again.

Oh, at the gift of a tear! Whoever would think to be so thankful for the wetness of water sliding down one's cheek because of the liquidized feeling that sent it? Feelings hurt sometimes, but I'd rather be tendered to tears by a feeling.... than to daily be more hardened and calloused and more embittered by one because it won't produce it. We're told that "laughter is the best medicine." Maybe that's so? But maybe, sometimes, tears are too?

Last night as I lay on my bed, I begged God to send tears and to help Gerri to cry! I asked Him to fallow the ground and send rain to water the hardness that's become so dry in her insides.

"Sow for yourselves righteousness; reap steadfast love; break up your fallow ground, for it is the time to seek the LORD, that He may come and rain righteousness upon you" - Hos 10:12.
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