An observation

I'm noticing that as I get older, I am less able to cry in times of sorrow and more able to cry in times of joy. I don't know why that is. It's almost as if I have slowly learned to treat the disappointments and injuries as inevitables...or perhaps I have gotten to that point where I no longer feel like people are able to find me in my tears and I'm likewise unable to reach out to them.

It's one of those sobering realizations that makes me long for a simpler time...one when we knew exactly who would answer my cries and give me a hug and help me overcome the scrape, the bruise, the loss and the fears. As I grow older, those challenges are getting so big that it's hard to know exactly where comfort and solace will come from. And so dealing with them as they come along seems to be my standard course of action.

That, of course, doesn't explain why nowadays I find my tears coming in outbursts of overwhelming hope...they come after the storm has passed, and I am able to see how beautiful the world actually is. And sometimes that comes in an instant--a simple thought, a joyous song, a quiet moment.

I don't know--is this the we all grow up? We learn to be "strong"...to expect that help will not be there; yet when all is said and done, it is that very help, those unseen confederates, those quiet healers, that brings us through. And there is nothing more that we can do but overflow with all that we have once we see them in their splendor.