10/40 - I'll Cry If I Want To

Recently, Maddie walked into our apartment from a day with her clients and caught me crying. I was sitting on the couch rewatching Golden Buzzer moments on America's Got Talent. It was an audition I've seen a dozen times, but as the judge was talking to the contestant about why their performance was special, I could feel the tears welling up in my eyes. As the judge leaned over and hit the big gold button on the table, I felt the tears fall down my face. I love seeing people's dreams come true and receive the validation that all their hard work has paid off, at least for a moment.

Whenever I am crying over something silly like that, I remember back to when my Dad told me at an early age, "it is okay to cry, it means you still have a heart"

There were multiple times in my late single digits and early teen years where I was crying for no apparent reason. I just was feeling some kind of way and when asked what was wrong, couldn't explain it. The specifics of those tearful moments escape me now, but there is one moment that was captured in this picture above.

It was Christmas and my family made the long trek back from Texas to see my Dad's side of the family in Iowa. My Dad has two older sisters and they have three and four boys respectively. I'm somewhere in the middle of that cousin group, but I always kind of knew that they all were closer with each other than with me since they all lived in Iowa and lived the farm town life that is not too far away from what you might see in Friday Night Lights, just add corn.

We were opening presents and we all had a similar-looking package from Grandma. As we opened them, it was sweatshirts that Grandma had made for us with sow-on patches and letters. As I looked around, I saw all of my cousins pulling out sweatshirts in the color of their high school football team that were blacks and reds and dark blues with patches to match. They all had really "cool" looking sweatshirts.

When I unwrapped mine, I saw a baby blue color and a soccer ball on mine. I felt my tears welling up and walked out of the room and sat on the stairs and cried. I remember thinking, "What are you doing? This isn't helping you be cool with your cousins. Stop crying." My Dad came and found me and let me be sad about my sweatshirt being baby blue and that it made me think Grandma thought I was a baby compared to my cool cousins. Just getting the words out to someone else was really helpful and eventually let me calm down and come back into the room and thank Grandma for the sweatshirt and smile for the photo.

I am aware of many more times in my life where I got caught off guard with a sudden wave of sadness and some tears. But I am really grateful that I still have a heart that can feel those feels and that I was taught at an early age not to run away from them but to give them some space to pour out and then get back into whatever is going on around me. Being able to control when and how we deal with our emotions is a real gift and one that takes some practice to handle with dignity.