A Prayer for the One Who Cries in Secret

Elisha Lee: I want to talk to someone specific today. Not everyone. Just you. The one who waits until the house is quiet. The one who turns on the shower so no one hears. The one who sits in the parking lot after a hard day, just for a few minutes because the car is the only place that feels safe, enough to fall apart. The one who has mastered the art of composing yourself before you walk back into the room. Eyes dry, breath steady, smile reconstructed. The one who cries in secret. I see you and more importantly, God sees you. Not the version of you that holds it together. Not the version of you that shows up strong. Not performance. You. The one behind the closed door. The one in the parking lot. The one in the dark. This episode is for you. Welcome to Elisha Space. I'm Elisha. And today we're going somewhere tender. This is a space for healing, for truth, and for the kind of conversation that most people are afraid to start. If you are new here, welcome. You found this for a reason. And if you have been here before, you already know that we don't perform okay in this space. We just are. Before we go any further, I need to do something for... Before we go any further, I need you to do something for me. Wherever you are, I need you to come back into your body. If you've been crying, your nervous system is still activated. If you haven't cried yet, it's probably because you've been holding your breath. So let's breathe together. Breathe in through your nose for a count of four. One, two, three, four. Hold. One, two, three, four. Now breathe out slowly through your mouth for six. One, two, three, four, five, six. One more time. In for four. Hold. out for six. Notice where you feel that release in your body. Notice your throat, that tight, constricted place where the tears have been living. Notice your chest. Notice the space right between your eyes. You don't have to hold it together here. This is a safe space to let it go. I want to start by asking a question that I don't think we ask often enough. Why do we cry alone? On the surface, that seems like it should have an obvious answer, but when I sit with it clinically, when I think about the women who come into my counseling office and tell me they haven't cried in front of anyone in years, the answer is far more complex than privacy. We cry in secret because somewhere along the way, we learned that our tears were inconvenient. Maybe you were raised in a household where emotion was treated as weakness, where someone said overtly or just through their reactions, stop crying or I'll give you something to cry about. Maybe you were in a faith community where weeping was suddenly framed. as lack of trust in God. Where the message, spoken or unspoken was, if your faith is strong enough, you shouldn't be this sad. Maybe you have been the strong one for so long, the caregiver, the mother, the friend, everyone leans on, that you genuinely don't know who would hold you if you fell apart. Or maybe, and I want to say this gently, maybe you've let someone see your tears before and what they did with that vulnerability hurt you so deeply that you made a decision never again. If any of that is true, I need you to hear this. Hiding your tears was not a flaw. It was protection. Your nervous system learned to regulate emotion privately because private was safe. That was wisdom, not weakness. But here is what happens when we suppress grief over a long period of time. The body keeps the score. The research on emotional suppression, particularly the work of Dr. Bessel van Dr. Kolk tells us that unexpressed grief does not disappear. It relocates. It lives in your jaw tension, your chronic fatigue, your inexplicable irritability at 4 p.m. when nothing specific has happened, your feeling of numbness and moments that should move you but don't anymore. Your tears are not a sign that something is wrong with you. They are a sign that something happened to you. And the body remembers everything you told yourself you were fine about. Notice where you feel that in your body right now. Is there something in your chest that wants to move? Something in your throat that has been waiting for permission? You have permission. Now I want to take you somewhere in scripture that I don't think we visit often enough. Psalms 56 verse 8, David writes, you have kept count of my tossings, put my tears in your bottle. Are they not in your book? I want you to sit with that image for a moment. God keeps a bottle and in that bottle, he collects your tears. not your performance, not your accomplishments, not the ways you have been strong, your tears, the ones no one saw, the ones from last Tuesday night, the ones from three years ago that you still haven't fully processed, the ones from the version of you who was five years old and didn't have words for what was happening. every single one seen, collected, recorded. This is not a distant God watching you from above detached sovereignty. This is a God who leans in close enough to catch what falls from your eyes and says, I have this, I am keeping this, this matters to me. And then there's John. Chapter 11, verse 35, the shortest verse in all of scripture. Jesus wept. He didn't weep because his faith was weak. He didn't weep because he had forgotten that he was about to raise Lazarus from the dead. He wept because his friend was in a tomb and the people he loved were in pain. And something in Jesus, fully God, fully human, felt that. God is not embarrassed by your tears. He modeled them. And then Isaiah chapter 53 verse three, the portrait of the Messiah, a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief, not acquainted with strength only, not a God who only shows up in the triumphant moments, acquainted with grief, which means when you are grieving in secret, you are not alone in an unfamiliar place. You are in the presence of the One who has been their longest. And finally, I want to take you to Revelation chapter 21 verse 4. The ecstological promises, the final word, He will wipe every tear from their eyes. there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain. God's plan for the future doesn't include pretending tears never happened. It includes wiping them personally, tenderly, one by one. That is the posture of your God towards your grief. So if you have been hiding your tears because you thought God expected better from you, I want to offer you this refrain. God is not waiting for you to stop crying. He is waiting for you to cry with him. I want to pray over you now. Not a quick closing prayer, a real one, the kind that goes into the places we usually don't let anyone touch. If you're able to, close your eyes, place one hand on your chest, feel your own heartbeat, and receive this. Lord, I come before you on behalf of the one who is listening right now. The one who has been carrying something so heavy for so long that she has almost forgotten what it felt like to put it down. I come on behalf of the woman who cried last night when the house was finally quiet. On behalf of the woman who sat in her car this morning and had to coach herself through three breaths before she could walk inside. On behalf of the woman who has smiled through things that should have broken her, because she didn't know if there was anyone safe enough to break in front of. God, you see her, not the version she presents to the world, not the strength she has curated, not the I'm fine she has perfected, the real one, the tired one. the one who has been whispering prayers at 2 a.m. and wondering if you can hear her through the ceiling. You can. You always could. Lord, I ask you to go into the places she has kept hidden. Not to expose her, but to heal her. The grief she doesn't have words for. The loss that never got her funeral. The wound that never happened so long ago. She's not even sure if it's still there. Until something touches it and she realizes it. It never really healed. Meet her there. not with judgment, not with the pressure to be further along, but with the same tenderness you share Mary at the tomb, the same compassion you showed the woman at the well, the same mercy you extend to every broken, complicated, beautiful human being who ever had the courage to show you what they were really carrying. Let her feel that you are not disappointed in her tears. Let her feel that she is not weak for needing you this much. Let her feel, maybe for the first time in a long time, that she does not have to hold this alone. and God for the specific pain she's carrying today. The thing she hasn't said out loud to anyone. I ask you to be present in that place. You know what it is. You've known since before she found this podcast. You orchestrated this moment. So meet her in it. Bring healing that counseling can't reach. Bring peace. that doesn't make sense given her circumstances. Bring the kind of rest that isn't about sleep, but about her soul finally exhaling. Isaiah said, you would bind up the brokenhearted. Lord bind, heal what is fractured, mend what has been torn, restore what has been taken, and where restoration looks different than she imagined. Give her the grace to grieve what she expected and receive what you have. For the woman who hasn't cried in so long, she's worried the tears won't come anymore. I pray for a safe unlocking, a gentle falling of what has been frozen. Let it move. For the woman who can't stop crying and doesn't understand why. I pray for the grace of meaning. Let her tears not feel like chaos. Let them feel like prayer, because they are. And for the woman who is angry, the one who isn't sad, she's furious and she's ashamed of the fury. I pray you receive her anger as honestly as you receive her tears. because David was angry too. And you still called him a man after your own heart. You are large enough for all of it, Lord. Let her know today and whatever way she needs to know it. She is seen. She is loved. She is not forgotten. And she will not cry forever. Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning. Her morning is coming. In Jesus' name, amen. want to say something to you before we close. The fact that you cry in secret is not evidence that you are broken. It is evidence that you feel deeply in a world that did not always make space for your depth. but I want to offer you an invitation. Begin slowly, safely, to bring what has been secret into the light. Not social media light, not oversharing, not the kind of vulnerability that leaves you exposed and regretful, but one safe person, a counselor, a trusted friend, a pastor who has done their own work. Someone who has earned the right to hold what is precious to you. Because here is what I know clinically and spiritually. What we keep in the dark tends to stay wounded. What we bring into the light begins to heal. James chapter 5 verse 16 says, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed. The framework for healing and scripture was never solitary. It was communal. It was relational. It was two or more gathered, holding one another's reality, praying one another through. You were not designed to heal alone. And you deserve someone who will sit with you in the parking lot, metaphorically, emotionally, spiritually, and say, you don't have to hold this anymore. I've got you. Your closing challenge this week is simple, but it is not easy. Tell someone one, two, three. Not everything, just one thing. One real thing that you have been keeping in the secret place. To a counselor, to a journal, where God can meet you in the writing, to a trusted friend, to God himself out loud. in your car, in your own words, not the polished prayer version, just the real one. God, I'm tired. God, I'm hurting. God, I don't understand. God, I need you. That is enough. That is more than enough. And if you are in a season where you don't have a safe person yet, That is okay. Healing starts with honesty. And the most important witness to your pain is already with you. He was with you in the dark last night. He'll be with you tomorrow. And he is with you right now. You are a loved friend, deeply, specifically, completely loved. This is your space. Come back whenever you need it.