Growing up, baseball was life, and the Atlanta Braves were my hyper fixation. Want to know Chipper Jones’ batting average up to that point in the season, I got you, but ask me my multiplication tables, I probably don’t have that. Bobby Cox was the manager and as far as I was concerned, Bobby was the best. Chipper Jones, Tom Glavine, Greg Maddox, John Smoltz, Rafael Furcal, Javy Lopez, and Andruw Jones. These are the Braves I grew up watching and could spout all sorts of stats out about their playing.
Continuing my hyper fixation with baseball, anything baseball was the name of the game. Computer game? It would have to be one of my different versions of Backyard Baseball. If you don’t recognize that game, your childhood was severely lacking in the computer game department. If I had to write a paper or sentences for school, it was on baseball. Favorite movies, baseball related. Angels in the Outfield, The Rookie, and A League of Their Own were my top picks. Rookie of the Year was not far behind the rest.
Angels in the Outfield had the obvious comedy appeal. It also has a what we now know is a star studded cast. Joseph Gordon Levitt, Danny Glover, Matthew McConaughey- to name a few. It was terrible baseball team that was in last place in the division until angels appear to help the players play better. Naturally only one person could see the angels and that was Joseph Gordon Levitt’s character. The Rookie is about Dennis Quad’s character chasing his lifelong dream. A 40 year old high school teacher and coach, trying out for the minors, making it and then getting called up to the major leagues. And it’s based on a true story. What’s not to love about a story like that? A League of Their Own is a story about women playing professional baseball during World War II. The movie followed the team Rockford Peaches and the lives of the players on that team. The manager of the team is played by none other than the incredible Tom Hanks. As a young girl, obsessed with baseball, this movie was it for me. It did nothing but fuel the unrealistic ideas that I too could one day play baseball in the major league.
One of the most iconic quotes, in my opinion, comes from A League of Their Own. The scene is this: the Rockford Peaches are in a game and they are switching from being on the field to hitting. As the team comes running into the dugout, Tom Hanks’ character stops one of the players, Evelyn, to ask her what the heck she was doing on the field and which team did she play for. He continued to yell at her for a poor choice in judgement she made about where to throw the ball. He tells her something along the lines of use your head, it’s the big thing above your butt. Naturally, she starts crying. Tom Hanks’ character really loses it then. He starts yelling at her asking if she’s crying, and then starts yelling “Are you crying? There’s no crying. There’s no crying in baseball!!!!”. The interaction between the two ends with Evelyn saying she didn’t mean to do that. Was she talking about the bad play or the fact she started crying?
Somewhere in my mind, the whole idea of there’s no crying in baseball translated into there’s no crying in life period. And the way my young mind understood the above scene is Evelyn was apologizing for crying. As an adult, I understand crying is “okay”, or so people tell me, but in the back of my mind, there’s the image of Tom Hanks yelling about there’s no crying in baseball. I’m almost immediately filled with shame or regret over the tears. It’s like crying is a sign of weakness and you can’t show weakness.
Last Thursday night, I sat in my car crying in the local Winn Dixie parking lot. For whatever reason, I’ve been feeling all the things lately and the tears are pretty frequent for the first time in forever. Does this mean we’ve finally found the right cocktail of medicine? Does it mean the medicine isn’t working? Or is it a combination of the first option and the fact sometimes life is just really hard, and some big things are happening fast and I don’t know how to respond and process it all mentally and emotionally?
As random cars passed by me in the parking lot, I almost felt embarrassed that they saw me crying. Mind you, these are complete strangers whom I will probably never see again. Can you imagine how I feel when I cry in front of someone I know and WILL see again? I can tell you exactly how I feel. I feel like an idiot and proceed to beat myself up mentally about the tears for the next week or so. I may even have a different demeanor around them after the first time I cry in front of them.
I’ve been thinking about different comments I’ve heard from other people about crying. They sit in the back of a room because they know they will cry and don’t want people to see. They don’t want to be a distraction to those around them. They stay home because the tears won’t stop coming. My question becomes, why? Why are we embarrassed or ashamed or even uncomfortable to let people see our tears? Do we think it’s a sign of weakness? Previously, I would have agreed with that. Do we just not want people to know how we truly are doing? Why have we bought into this lie that it’s not okay to cry?
When Lazarus died, Jesus wept. Why did Jesus cry? Was it because of Him being both fully God and fully human? Crying is a human response to some emotion. Or did Jesus weep because He knew Lazarus was in Heaven, and that for Him to do what needed to be done, Lazarus would leave Heaven and return to earth? I don’t know the answer, but I just know Jesus wept. If the perfect Son of God, savior of the world, cried, why do I, why do we, think crying is a bad thing? Jesus is perfect. If crying was bad, Jesus wouldn’t be perfect, right? I feel like that alone should be proof to remind me crying in and of itself isn’t a bad thing.
On this journey to be healthier mentally, emotionally, and all the other ally things, I am working on the shame and embarrassment I often feel when I cry. I’m learning that there are and aren’t safe people to cry around. Tom Hank’s character in A League of Their Own- not a safe person to cry around. I’m working on believing that it is okay to cry. I’m working on letting the thought that there is crying in life and in baseball be a normal concept to me. I’m thankful that the Lord’s mercies are new everyday. He gives me so much more grace than I deserve and gives me so much more grace than I give myself. One day, I’ll cry and won’t feel like an idiot afterwards.
Grief. Going. Healing. 
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