I cried the other day.  As in *really* cried. Ok, I wept. Then I wept again a few days later.

Why? You wonder. Well yes, I have a ‘good’ reason (whatever that means): my husband’s Grandad died. And I hardly knew him – it’s not ‘my loss’ – but he was ace, and now my husband’s family’s lives have all been shaken and there is a painful Grandad-shaped hole in my beloved’s heart. I cried because my Grandad is dead and it made me miss him… I cried for loss.  I cried because death is ugly, and rude, and inconsiderate, and reckless. It disgusts me, and offends me, and angers me – and saddens me deeply.

So I wept. But I didn’t weep alone; I cried on the phone with a girlfriend. And she…listened.  In near silence (apart from occasional comments to remind me she was there and wasn’t speaking to let cry and not because she’d gone!); she just listened.  As I gut-cried: snot, tears, stomach-holding, breath-shortening cried. And she listened.

Do you have the patience to be that generously uncomfortable and listen to pain uninterrupted?  No advice, no urging to talk (for whose benefit I wonder), no words of comfort or encouragement – but just to listen?  To give in silent companionship a craved shoulder (well a telephonic one in this case!) with no unnecessary words?

And do you cry? I hope so!

Because I hope you *feel*.

I hope you empathise by really connecting not hypothesising.

And I hope you don’t ‘allow’ and ‘disallow’ yourself to cry – we don’t apply these arbitrary rules to peeing so why to crying?!

And I hope that like me, you have a loving friend to listen in your pain.

And that like me you find comfort remembering, as I did in my sobbing, that ‘Jesus wept’ (Luke 11:35)  That’s not ‘Jesus let a solitary tear slide down His face in a manly fashion when His friend died –  it’s snot, tears, stomach-holding, breath-shortening wept. He understands.