Thinking Out Loud, Volume CDXC

I can only remember seeing my dad cry three times....on the first Mother's Day after my grandmother died, when his brother died, and and the day he backed over my little brother in the car (My brother was not injured. Just the enormity of the whole incident overwhelmed my dad.) As a little boy growing up, I heard over and over, big boys aren't supposed to cry. That one line has replayed in my head practically every time I've felt that knot in my throat and the tears on the verge of surfacing. Big boys don't cry. We're supposed to be tough. I know without a doubt that Dad shed a lot of tears I didn't know about, and honestly, I wish I had seen more tears flowing from his eyes so the embarrassment of being unable to restrain my own tears wouldn't affect me now the way it has since I've become an adult. It's okay for a man to cry.....even in public, but even now in the twenty-first century, we men are subjected to ridicule if we dare allow a tear to surface, or let our voices break while speaking. If you don't believe that, just listen to the way John Boehner is treated after one of his speeches. Women are typically more emotional that us men, so it's just more acceptable for them to be seen shedding tears. Deep down, I know it's really okay for a man to cry, but with a mindset that has been engrained into my head for six decades that tears are taboo, it's hard to just flush it out of my mind all at once. In February, 2014, I was asked to speak at my father-in-law's funeral. After my own dad's death in 1986, I began to look to my wife's dad as my father figure, and on the day of his death I wrote a "straight from the heart" tribute to him. As I read my own words to the congregation that day, I had a difficult time speaking due to my voice breaking and tears flooding my eyes. (Even now, tears are welling in my eyes as I type this.) I admit I felt a degree of humiliation because I couldn't hold back my tears in front of hundreds of people. About a year prior to that time, I had been asked to give my testimony to a Run for God class, and I spoke about some things very personal to me, which also resulted in tears and feelings of embarrassment. That's ridiculous, I know, but I also know there are multiplied millions of other men who can identify with what I'm saying. Several weeks ago in one of these blogs, I wrote about the Jason Crabb song, "Sometimes I Cry," and I spoke about how there are times when I'm alone, I cry. Well, today I'm here to tell you, as some of you have witnessed, sometimes I cry when I'm NOT alone, even though I'm a man! I'm happy to announce I've reached the point to where I don't worry about it that much any more. I'm bigger than that now. Yes, I know the old cliché is still out there that "big boys don't cry," but I have a rebuttal to that statement: Tough ones do. Preston