Who Am I? - Part 5

Feelings show us what our needs are. Sometimes, as I was writing earlier, those needs belong to younger versions of ourselves, but that does not make the feelings or the needs invalid. When we block out our own needs and feelings, they simply build up inside to the point that they explode.

I often tell people about their “cup”. This is the cup they hold all their “stuff” in. Sometimes the cup gets too full and overflows. We talk about having too much on our plates. A full cup is the same. Life fills our cup with troubles and concerns, or busy-ness. Then one more thing happens, the cat throws up on some important papers, and we lose it.

Women usually overflow into tears. Men (and some women) are more likely to put a cover on their cups, screw it on tight, and the pressure builds inside like in a pressure cooker. But unlike a pressure cooker, these lidded cups often have no relief valve. When the pressure gets too great, it blows, and these people explode into anger.

Either way, whether we overflow with tears or fits of anger, we end up wondering, What is the matter with me? Why can other people handle things like this, and I can’t? We compare our pattern of overflows and explosions to that of others. Each person, though, does not have the same sized cup. Some have massive cups, with massive ability to hold emotion and manage life’s wallops. Others have tiny delicate cups.

I have in my office a tiny cup that my mother told me was my grandmother’s “tear cup”. She never told me more than that, and I wish I could talk to Grammie about it. It is a tiny china cup with no handle. My grandmother shed many tears, with the deaths of several of her children, including one who suffered horribly when his diaper caught on fire. I wonder if she actually caught her tears in this little cup.

The Bible mentions a tear cup or bottle (Psalm 56:8). In Biblical times, special jars were used to gather and hold one’s tears, to show how valuable those tears were, and how great was the grief of the cup’s owner.

These days, we would rather not cry. We do not want our cups to be full, and blame ourselves for having such a small capacity to hold the trials of life. The key is to lower the level of “stuff” in our cups. Life will always throw us more curve balls, and a lower level gives us space to catch and hold that next thing that comes our way.