Today on our walk, I realized something. I realized something about my son. Something that I never want to change: he is one of the most sensitive people I know. I delight in seeing his sensitivity, how much he cares, how deeply he loves. My heart fills to near bursting when I see how completely he feels.
He is pure emotion packed into a tiny body. Sometimes this emotion is self-serving (as is typical at that age). He cries when he doesn't get his way. He throws a fit when you can't understand what he's saying. But more often than not, his emotion is invoked by something else. This is a little boy who never really needs a physical reprimand, because a stern look or a terse word are enough to make him hang his head and cry. This is the little boy who cries during certain parts of his favorite movies at two years old, when the bad guy has the upper hand and the good guy is in trouble. This is the little boy who (as happened today) giggles with glee when a ladybug crawls on his tiny finger, and then breaks down when the ladybug flies away. This is the little boy who, a few minutes later, wiped his tear-stained cheeks, waved toward the sky and whispered, "Bye-bye, ladybug".
In that moment, I realized something major that is amiss in our society. There is something wrong with a society who raises their young boys, sweet little boys like this, into men who can't talk about their emotions. Into men who are afraid to cry. Men who feel like being strong means appearing unfeeling, uncaring, unloving. There is something wrong with a society who puts more emphasis on being a strong man than being a loving man, a society that doesn't teach that the two go hand-in-hand. Sometimes even I find myself telling Daniel to be a "big boy" when he's crying, essentially telling him that big boys don't cry, that they don't show emotion. There is something deeply wrong with that. Big boys do cry. Men can cry. At least, they should be able to.
"Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. Let all that you do be done in love."
1 Corinthians 16:13-14
