I once heard, that tears are a way of telling you- not that you’re weak, but that you’ve lost something or someone who mattered. It mattered because you loved.
As I head into my hotel quarantine on this side of the world, catching a glimpse of the beautiful sea after being weeks away in landlocked Eswatini, the sight of the blue water, a mirror of the sky, takes my breath away.
When the sun sets, and the night gathers in, I think about the the new friends and people who walked into my life and are now another world away-
-My team lead and Eswatini mother who got into her car and sobbed uncontrollably, shocking me, because she couldn’t drive off- “God sent you to me as a spiritual awakening. It just occurred to me this is the last time I’ll say goodbye to you.”
And now she cried, unashamed. “Because this is grief I feel,” she said.
-The cook at the diner who noticed I eat the same thing every evening and always tried to add a little something special in- and only just for me, who slipped out from his duty station once and ran on foot to buy spinach from the street market because he found out I love spinach but they had run out.
The lady who brought me a fork when I was hungry, the stranger-turned-friend who gave me a lift to church every Sunday, the kind Irish girl who let me pray for her and said I changed her life trajectory forever.
Oh, this bright-sad, happy-grief to carry in my soul.
Only God knows how grateful I am for this quarantine- this space and time to percolate, to let the grief of who mattered sink slowly from my heart into His.
Beloved, if you like me, have loved and lost- would you be assured that it’s okay to cry.
Tears honor the people you loved. It shows they mattered to you, that you cherished and treasured them. That you loved and lost and were brave to let them love you.
I joked that because of the epic birthday cake you’d all gifted to me on my birthday, the one with my Swazi name and the Eswatini flag on it, a part of Eswatini will always be inside my gut.
And you’ll forever now, be a part of me. ❤️
