“Behind horns, sticks”, “when it rains, it thunders”, are phrases that we have often heard said when the storms of life fall one after another and everything seems to crumble in front of our eyes. Life feels like in the catastrophe movies, where they so masterfully show buildings falling and leaving the streets deserted, or the waves of the sea covering cities as they are swept up and out of their course. We feel it as we experience the pain when people we love so much pass from this world, leaving an uncomfortable void in our hearts.

I have thought long and hard before writing this article because we all want to read stories that give us encouragement instead of grief, more so now that our world is in “labor pains” and we hear daily of people dying all around us. The intention of this article is to bring encouragement, but without underestimating the fact that we were created not only with the ability to laugh, but also to cry. Have you ever thought about that?

Since we were little we have always been told ““don’t cry” or “pretty girls don’t cry”, but the reality is that we do cry and we can’t help it when something hurts us deeply. The genuine tears that welled up in our eyes in the face of affliction have the power to help us to unburden the most acute sorrows of the soul, bringing calm and, in time, tranquility.

Tears, my dear virtuous woman, are good because God created us with the ability to cry,

Ecclesiastes 3:4 says that there is a time to “weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance”. We have the permission to do so, what a relief, Jesus himself wept at the death of his good friend Lazarus.

The interesting thing is that Jesus also tells us that those who mourn are blessed because they will be comforted! (Matthew 5:4) That’s the encouragement we need while we mourn! The experience of a good comfort comes after a good cry! And this consolation that we receive after we have wept bitterly, comes with a great purpose: to extend that consolation with which we were consoled. God himself comforts us with his beautiful promises, Psalm 119:50 says This is my comfort, in the midst of sorrow, that your promise gives me life”.

Not long ago my father departed to heaven and a very good friend comforted me with these wise words, “Remember that if your present pain does not drive you away but brings you closer to God, then it is a purposeful pain.” Truly her words gave me a different perspective to my pain helping me to look to heaven for timely succor and not to my feeling of emptiness produced by grief. It is a blessing to have friends in this life who know how to comfort you because they have experienced how God does it in them.

Today may be the day when your heart is encouraged by the knowledge that God sustains and encourages us as we go through life’s bitter pills, knowing that His grace is sufficient and that everything else will heal in due time. Today even in the midst of your personal chaos you can choose to be an agent of comfort to someone in a worse condition.

Let us treasure what the Apostle Paul told the Corinthians 1:3-4 (PDT) “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, a merciful Father and God who always gives us comfort. God comforts us in all our sufferings so that we too may be able to comfort those who suffer, giving them the same comfort we receive from him.”

¡It is okay to cry!

It has been two years since the world experienced a pandemic that struck many homes like a plague eating away at the soul. Many families of the earth were faced with the difficult task of saying goodbye to their loved ones “before their time”. Grief filled every heart as if it were a cancer that corrodes to the marrow. Communities of faith found themselves with the great task of strengthening their members to give a helping hand and words of comfort to suffering souls in the face of the threatening wave of death sweeping across humanity.

This reminds me of the biblical story of Naomi with her daughter-in-law Ruth. Naomi was a woman who not only faced widowhood in a distant land, but later her two sons would also leave their daughters-in-law Ruth and Orpah widowed. What a profound pain to lose your husband and two sons! Her grief led her to even doubt her identity as she no longer wanted to be called Naomi which means “pleasant or sweet”, she now wanted to be called Mara which means “bitter or afflicted woman”.

 Grief has the potential to make us lose sight of who we are, if we don’t set out to guard our hearts in the process.

But Naomi’s story does not remain bitter, she has someone to count on, her daughter-in-law Ruth promised her fidelity and to be with her until death! Ruth, whose name means “friend, ally” lived up to it by behaving with Naomi as a true friend in grief, after all, she was facing it herself, in the face of her own husband’s death. Perhaps her own grief made her develop such empathy that she followed and served her mother-in-law wherever she went.

None of us are exempt from suffering, in fact, we are all in some way carrying our own dose of grief. The question is, are we counting on those “Ruths” in our lives? In what way have you identified that person God has placed to make your burden lighter? What characteristics would she have?

Remember that it should not surprise you to go through bitter trials, since our Lord Jesus had declared it to His disciples before being sacrificed for the sins of the world, He said: “in the world you will have tribulation, but trust that I have overcome the world” John 16:33.

My beloved Virtuous Woman, I encourage you today to put your trust in Jesus, the Author and the consummator of our faith, I encourage you today to raise your eyes to heaven and be strengthened in the most intimate part of your being. He will accompany you in your process, like a faithful friend. He will dry your tears and restore your name, you will be called blessed and sweet again for having placed your security in the Giver of life.

My prayer for you today is that you will be filled with all the comfort of God, He has overcome the pain of the world.