The Ugly Cry

There is something beautiful in a woman's soul that enables us to carry the weight of our world. We want to help, to love, and to nurture those around us, whether its our kids, our family, our friends, and even perfect strangers. I believe, as women, we are entrusted with the gift of being able to unfold the layers, breaking down the walls that others build because of the things life has brought into their story. All of us have been hurt in some way. We yearn to feel loved, valued, and cherished; wanting to mean something to the people around us. I thank God that each of us are created with different strengths and weaknesses. Being able to see, truly see and promote other's strengths will help us fight through our weaknesses. In order to focus and help develop another person's strengths we must first learn to be vulnerable. Being vulnerable, plain stinks sometimes. None of us want to come across weak or feeble. Most of us would rather hide behind a broken smile than to face the gut wrenching trials we try and hide. Somehow telling ourselves that if we cry we lose our strength and we are weak. So we don't cry, we hide it, and we fail to see that there is a beauty in exposing ourselves to be vulnerable in our most intimate moments of life.

For most of us we don't pray first, we complain first. Our kids did xyz, our husbands didn't do abc, and there's just not enough energy and strength to do all we want to so we feel like we failed.
If you are like me at all you set standards that you just can't manage to accomplish by yourself. God in all his glory asks us to cast our burdens on him, but what do we do? Most of us  hold onto the problems thinking we are stronger if we do it all by ourselves. Why oh why friend do we see vulnerability as a weakness? We see it as a weakness because none of us want to feel hurt. None of us want others to see us as an ugly duckling.

I was explaining to my daughter the other day the importance of holding true to our beliefs, her gifts, and cherishing how God gave us all unique beauty outside as well as inside.We don't need to try to be like, "everyone," else because that is really overrated. She was crying about being different than so and so and feeling left out and alone. My heart broke in that moment, because I know the feeling all to well and soon we were both doing the ugly cry.

What is the ugly cry? Its a cry from the very depths of our souls that says, "I cant do this anymore. God I am here, I'm open there's no more walls, please fill me with your peace and love!"
To me the ugly cry symbolizes the very truth of what it means to hand it all over to the potter's hands and saying, "I know I can't do it by myself. I can't change this situation only you can Lord. Strengthen me, fix the broken parts. As the snot filled cries fill our faces, hence the name, "The Ugly Cry," We struggle to breath to beg for our souls to be filled, for us to feel love, and peace beyond understanding.

Its in those moments when I have found music to be my saving grace. Music and worship music touch my soul in a way that nothing and no one else can.

The bible mentions many times about crying. I find comfort that even when I feel weak I am actually strong, because it is those precise moments when God's strength is shown to me more and more. I hardly ever cry but when I do I now remind myself that its not a show of weakness but actually a clear sign of surrender to the one who can bare all of our weakness and burdens. 

Psalm 18:6

In my distress I called upon the LORD, And cried to my God for help; He heard my voice out of His temple, And my cry for help before Him came into His ears.

Crying is not a new concept and it is a physical 

sign that we have carried too much too long 

without giving it to God. Are you carrying 

baggage maybe someone said to you, 

or something someone did to you? I love to 

concentrate on the fact that God made me to 

be me. There is only one me. God made you to 


be you. You have your own set of beautimous 


skills that shine out of you beyond what you 

can imagine if you open the window to let it 

shine! Hand the rest over, cry, release, then 

stand back up and Shine!