Why tears should encourage you

For Mama Loves this week, I am linking up an old post. It isn't a product I love. Rather, I love facts, new information about things in life that reminds me of the greatness of God.

I cry easily. My tear ducts are uncontrollable. Really. My husband doesn't believe me. His tear ducts rarely misbehave. If I feel any emotion strongly from joy to anger to sadness, I cry. It was horrible as a teenager. Imagine the message I communicated if someone made me angry and I cried.  Or the embarrassment of crying when I got a C on a test when I was just frustrated that I couldn't stop making dumb arithmetic mistakes. 

My Bird, she inherited my uncontrollable tear ducts (poor dear), and those tear ducts are not helpful on the competitive soccer field. And recently, as I cried with my mom over the loss of my grandma, we lamented the mind-of-their-own tears and how they made our noses run. I joked that God made it that way so we would stop eventually. 

Today, God gave me information that makes me want to scream to others, "Did you know this? Isn't it so obvious there is a creator?" While reading our Mother/Daughter Devotion by Dannah Gresh, Gresh shared some tear facts after we read about Jesus weeping when Lazarus died. Amazing. 

So today I bring you a few facts on the science of tears as a God Bump. Maybe you and your daughter can review these on a tear-filled day while you soak in the fact that your creator gave you tears so you can handle all of life. 

• We have three kinds of tears. Basal tears are almost constant and unnoticeable; they keep our eyes moist and we produce 5 to 10 ounces a day. Reflex tears are safety responses to irritants like dust or onions. And emotional tears form when stress triggers the endocrine system to make tears. Most believe that only humans produce emotional tears. 
• Basal tears are produced continuously in both humans and animals. They drain through a passageway between the eye and the nose. They keep both the eyes and the nose moist. They contain an antibacterial chemical called lysozyme. It keeps both the eyes and the nose healthy.
• Emotional tears have a different chemical make up than basal or reflex tears.  Reflex tears are mostly plain water. Emotional tears contain more protein-based hormones such as prolactin (the same hormone that controls milk production), adrenocorticotropic hormone (produced when we are stressed), and leucine enkephalin (a natural painkiller we make). So emotional tears are a way of lowering stress and ridding our body of biological toxins. 
• If we cry hard, excess tears drain from our eyes through the lacrimal ducts into our nose. The tears mix with mucus and our noses run. 
• Until puberty, boys and girls cry in equal amounts (personality not accounted for). After puberty, women are 4 times more likely to cry than men. Several things might explain this, women produce 60% more prolactin than men. Prolactin triggers the endocrine system so emotional tears are more likely. Also, most women have larger tear ducts than men so they produce more tears at once. 

Simply amazing. 

Sources: Science IQ, TLC Family: Cry it Out
Image: Free extras

Five Minute Friday: Real=tears?

I had two purposes in starting this blog. One was to share resources, challenges, and stories about raising girls. The other was to discipline myself to write. Writing organizes my thoughts and focuses my day. It takes the lessons God is teaching me out of blurry and into focus. Today, and maybe many future Fridays, I will focus on that second goal. A blogger that blesses me who writes The Gypsy Momma, hosts Five Minute Fridays. Each Friday she posts a word, then challenges other bloggers to write for five minutes flat without worrying whether it is write or not. Today's word is REAL. When we are done, we visit the blogger who linked up before us, and encourage them in their comment section. And though I didn't write about it, the word REAL reminds me of the Velveteen Rabbit, and that story had tears too. Thank you for reading the challenge, link up if you want to join us or go encourage some of the other bloggers who participate.

Leaving the women's prayer meeting I felt frustrated. Prayers for sick relatives, for which house to buy, for children to be potty trained. I wanted to pray about those things. But I knew that each of those women had deeper hurts, deeper prayer requests. Fear, protection, insecurity, whatever held them back,  they wouldn't share.  Maybe makeup covers more than blemishes. 

The next week, I knew from the way that meeting haunted me that I needed to speak. And I knew I would cry. I always cry. For my personality, real rarely comes without tears. And I knew my make up would run. When I walked in, I scanned the room for the nearest tissue box. And I shared, from my heart, some of the hard stuff. The things I could not leave at God's feet, thoughts that fought all week to take captive. And I cried. 

And then, some one else shared, with tears, about her parent's divorce. And then someone else about her food issues. And suddenly we loved each other more deeply when prayed, even if the real prayers were for sick relatives. 

If we are not real, why expect others to be?