Opening, cleansing

It was like a rubber plug was ripped from a drain and water gleefully glugged through this sudden and new opening.

Accept the water was tears and they were glugging all over my face.

I’ve cried a lot of tears in my day, but these felt different. Simple. Clean.

Not unlike the tears I cried when my mom called me to say our dog, Buddy, had been hit by a car and died. I was 22. We’d gotten Buddy when I was 12. He was a good dog, and I was sad.

Only sad.

Not mad-sad. Not disappointed-sad. Not hurt-sad. Plain, old sad.

The tears I cried in this moment felt like those tears. Free from layered emotion, they just flowed. I didn’t feel the need to stifle them or justify them or replace them with another response.

I was sad. And I cried. I wept—but not bitterly. No wrong had been done. No guilt exposed.

Tears of spring water, not vinegar. Cleansing, not burning.

Just sadness and the response to sadness that God gives us.

Maybe not holy tears, but something close.