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The Gift

I have a gift, I’ve been told, of tears. But it is a gift most strange and unwanted. To feel in such vivid technicolour the pain, the heartache that belongs to another – to call this gift? A gift of burden, a guilty knife within, a gift of sorrow. I fear to appear a vicarious participant in another’s private grief.

I didn’t ask for it. I wrestle with it; it seems so excessive. Disingenuous, I have called it.

I am tired of others telling me it is a gift, while they themselves seem pleased not to possess it. ‘It’s good!’ they cry, asking me to reflect on how I can quell it, contain and subdue it, remain detached and professional. ‘It’s how God has made you, part of your calling. But you should certainly grow a shell, cut it off if you can.’

Theologically reflect on how to not have it. Cherish it, but bury it where possible.

I’ve been asked if it is perhaps the result of some tapping on a personal trauma. Does the grief of others bring to light my own pain? But not so.

It is not my own tears that I shed. They are not even yours. They come unbidden like a spring from the deep. As if my soul has reached out to embrace with the other, and the tears flowing down my own cheeks are brought to ease the burden of the one in darkness.

Can this be a gift, this part of who I was created as being? Can it be gift, this tenderness to wounds, these all too visible manifestations springing forth from a trembling heart?

If a gift, then I shall think of these tears as God’s very own.

Droplets of divinity entering our anguish. The tears which fall to dampen the ground are those of the Creator, the father and mother of us all. A gift of connection, of walking alongside through the valley of shadow.

So if this is my gift, to taste the wounded beating heart of God, I will cherish it.

The Spirit at work in the depths beyond hiding.

For what is a gift, if not God with us, touching our humanity with love that weeps?



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