The other day, while assuring my daughter not to be afraid of a particular situation because God would see her through, she replied, “I know dad, but I’m human!”

I thought about it and remembered an incident, related by a single parent:

‘A recently divorced man with full custody of his children, I was determined to give them as normal and stable a home life as possible. I put on a happy face for them. I kept their activities as close to how they had always been as I could.

Today, I had risen slowly, gingerly, trying to avoid making even the least sound which might start them up again. I tiptoed out of their room, closed the door part way, and went downstairs.

Sitting at the dining room table, I slumped in my chair, aware that this was the first time since I came home from work that I’d been able to just sit down. I had cooked and served and encouraged two little ones to eat. I had done the dishes while responding to their many requests for attention. The bath, the stories, the backrubs, the singing and now, at long last, a brief moment for myself. The silence was a relief, for the moment.

Then it all crowded in on me: the fatigue, the weight of the responsibility, the worry about bills I wasn’t sure I could pay that month. The endless details of running a house. Only a short time before, I’d been married and had a partner to share these chores, these bills. These worries!

And loneliness! I felt as though I were at the bottom of a great sea of loneliness. It all came together and I was at once lost, overwhelmed. Unexpected, convulsive sobs overtook me. I sat there, silently sobbing.

Just then, a pair of little arms went around my middle and a little face peered up at me. I looked down into my five-year-old son’s sympathetic face.

I was embarrassed to be seen crying by my son. “I’m sorry, Ethan, I didn’t know you were still awake.” I don’t know why it is, but so many people apologize when they cry and I was no exception. “I didn’t mean to cry. I’m sorry. I’m just a little sad tonight.”

“It’s okay, Daddy. It’s okay to cry, you’re just a person.”

He crept into my lap and we hugged and talked for a while, and I took him back up to his bed and tucked him in. Somehow, it was possible for me to get to sleep that night too. Thank you, my son!’

Lovely story, isn’t it? And I’m sure there are many of us who feel ashamed to cry, because we feel we have to be strong for everybody else. Maybe we have to be, but it’s good to remember as we go through a rough patch and want  to cry, ‘That we are just a person,’..!

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