I didn\u2019t cry much when I was young but when I did, someone was always there to care for me – grandmother, mother, aunt.\u00a0\u00a0As I grew older, my need for someone to respond to my cries decreased, even as my times of crying were reduced.\u00a0\u00a0I grew up with the philosophy of life that says, grown men don\u2019t cry.\u00a0\u00a0But I never completely stopped crying. I spent a lot of time bottling up my tears, believing that if there was \u201cno crying in baseball \u201c (a line from one of my favorite movies), there ought not be crying anywhere else.\u00a0\u00a0Then one day I cried and my faithful responders had all departed for heaven.\u00a0\u00a0The occasion and details of my tears are unnecessary here, but the fact is, I cried, and no one responded. I began to ask myself, if a grown man cries and no one hears, is it still a valid cry?\u00a0\u00a0When I wasn\u2019t really looking for it, I found a comforting verse.\u00a0\u00a0On an occasion, Isaiah assured the people that God, \u201cwill be very gracious to you at the sound of your cry; when He hears it, He will answer you\u201d (Isaiah 30:19). Even if no one else hears and responds, God does. That\u2019s all I really needed to know, and pass on to you.\u00a0\u00a0Go ahead and cry when the occasion calls for tears.\u00a0\u00a0God is a first-responder.<\/p>\n
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I didn\u2019t cry much when I was young but when I did, someone was always there to care for me – grandmother, mother, aunt.\u00a0\u00a0As I grew older, my need for someone to respond to my cries decreased, even as my times of crying were reduced.\u00a0\u00a0I grew up with the philosophy of life that says, grown…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monday-morning-manna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3469"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3469\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3470,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3469\/revisions\/3470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}