Why Mothers Cry

“Why are you crying?”he asked his mom.

“Because I’m a mother,”she told him.

“I don’t understand,”he said.
His mom just hugged him and said, “You never will!”
Later the little boy asked his father why Mother seemed to cry for no reason.

“All mothers cry for no reason,”was all his dad could say.

The little boy grew up and became a man, still wondering why mothers cry. So he finally put in a call to God and when God got on the phone the man said, “God, why do mothers cry so easily.”

God said, “You see son, when I made mothers they had to be special. I made their shoulders strong enough to carry the weight of the world, yet gentle enough to give comfort. I gave them an inner strength to endure childbirth and the rejection that many times come from their children.

“I gave them a hardiness that allows them to keep going when everyone else gives up, and to take care of their families through sickness and fatigue without complaining.

“I gave them the sensitivity to love their children under all circumstances, even when their child has hurt them very badly. This same sensitivity helps them to make a child’s boo-boo feel better and helps them share a teenager’s anxieties and fears.

“I gave them a tear to shed. It’s theirs exclusively to use whenever it’s needed. It’s their only weakness.

It’s a tear for mankind.”

The Sorrow Tree

So it was that when the Hasidic pilgrims vied for those among them who had endured the most suffering, who was most entitled to complain, the Zaddck told them the story of the Sorrow Tree. On the Day of Judgment, each person will be allowed to hang one’s unhappiness and sufferings on a brach of the great Tree of Sorrows. After all have found a limb from which their miseries may dangle, they may all walk slowly around the tree. Each person is to search for a set of sufferings that he or she would prefer to those he or she has hung on the tree.

In the end, each one freely chooses to reclaim his or her own assortment of sorrows rather than those of another. Each person leaves the Tree of Sorrows wiser that when he or she arrived.

(Brian Cavanaugh, T.O.R., The Sower’s Seeds)