I Cried The Next Morning For No Reason

It happened over a cup.

You were rinsing something out, at about half past eight, in a kitchen that still had yesterday all over it, and it came up out of nowhere and you cried for about four minutes.

And nothing had happened. That is the part that frightened you. If somebody had said something, or if you had found a photograph, or if the day had been terrible, there would be a reason and a reason is manageable. There was no reason. There was a cup.

You stopped after four minutes, washed your face, and got on with the day, and you have been slightly unnerved by yourself ever since.

Let me say the first thing plainly, because I suspect you have been running an assessment of your own mental health since about nine o'clock.

Weeping without a nameable cause is not a symptom of anything going wrong. It is one of the most ordinary things a human body does after an extended period of holding itself together, and almost nobody is told that, so almost everybody who experiences it concludes something worrying about themselves.

I water my couch with my tears

There is a line in a psalm that reports weeping in physical detail and gives no reason for it at all.

I am weary with my groaning; all the night make I my bed to swim; I water my couch with my tears. (Psalm 6:6, King James Version)

All the night. That is duration, and it is reported plainly, and there is no embarrassment anywhere near it.

And notice the detail. He is not describing a feeling; he is describing furniture. A bed and a couch and how wet they are. That is a man reporting a physical event that happened to his body, in the way a person reports weather.

What the psalm does not do, anywhere, is give a cause. He does not say: I wept because of this particular thing. He reports the weeping, and it stands as a fact about a night rather than as a symptom requiring a diagnosis.

You are permitted to report a thing without accounting for it, and it is written into Psalm 6:6 that a man described his own weeping in physical detail and offered no reason at all. The written word keeps the account without a cause attached, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes the alarm out of a Tuesday morning for a woman who has been diagnosing herself since nine.

And notice where it is. In a psalm, which was sung, by a congregation, out loud.

You are inside something that was sung in public rather than hidden, and Psalm 6:6 was part of what the people of God said together. Scripture made a bed swimming with tears into a corporate text, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes that a permission rather than an oddity.

What the four minutes actually were

Now let me explain the mechanism, because knowing it removes most of the fear.

For about six weeks something has been held up. Not one thing. A whole system: the arranging, the anticipating, the being the one who notices, the getting through the day itself without anybody being hurt.

Holding takes muscle, and the muscle does not release on command. It releases when it is safe, which is usually not when you decide, and usually not at a moment that has any meaning.

The cup was not the cause. The cup was the moment your system finally established that nothing further was required of you, and it let go, and letting go looks like weeping because that is what letting go looks like in a human being.

You were never crying about a cup, and the written word reports a night of weeping without proposing a single explanation for it. Psalm 6:6 states the fact and moves on, and the Holy Spirit is the one who explains a body to a woman who has been treating it as evidence.

And here is why the absence of a reason felt so alarming. Everybody has a rule, which nobody was taught and everybody believes, that emotion is supposed to be proportionate to an identifiable cause. So an emotion with no cause reads as malfunction.

But the rule is not true. A great deal of what a body does is delayed, and arrives late, and attaches itself to whatever is in the room at the time, which yesterday was a cup.

You are not malfunctioning, and Scripture puts a plain report of weeping into a text that a whole nation sang. Psalm 6:6 describes the bed and the couch rather than the reason, and the Spirit of God is the one who is present in a four minute release that a woman did not choose.

Say it, and do not explain it

So here is the assignment, and the second half is the whole of it.

Say out loud that you cried and that you do not know why, and say it to God.

Both halves. The fact, and the not knowing. Something like: I cried for four minutes over a cup yesterday morning and I do not know why.

You are able to report a thing without a cause attached, and it has never once been required that an emotion be explained before it may be brought. Psalm 6:6 gives the detail and withholds the reason entirely, and the Holy Spirit is the one who receives a plain account from somebody who has none to give.

And do not explain it. That is the instruction and it matters more than it sounds.

The temptation is to append something: I suppose it was the build up, or it is probably because of my mother, or it must be the tiredness. Every one of those is a guess, and appending a guess turns a true report into an uncertain theory, and then the theory has to be managed instead of the thing having been said.

Say the fact and stop. Two clauses. It happened and I do not know why.

You are giving a plain account rather than a diagnosis, and the written word reports a bed swimming and offers no theory anywhere. Psalm 6:6 lets the weeping stand as what happened, and the Spirit of God is the one who is with a woman who says a thing and does not follow it with an explanation.