Real Men Don't Cry
(Unless. Until. Except. However.)
Somebody help me, tell me where to go from here cause even Thugs cry, but do the Lord care?
Today we get to feel our feelings. We don’t always like to, but we don’t have much choice. Much being the operative word.
We do have choice still. That won’t ever change. But sometimes we must realize choosing is the wrong choice. Which is WEIRD, to be sure.
And the grinder we’re being ushered into is the only path forward.
I had a hard time reading this piece from the hilariously named
.You should give it a shot yourself. Below I have summarized a PORTION of it. It isn’t short, but it is worth the time. And yes, it is full of flowery language and prose, but I imagine if you read what I write this will work for you, too.
***SPOILER START***
The article is a deeply personal and emotionally raw reflection written by a father in the wake of his daughter's life-altering spinal injury, which left her paralyzed. Over the course of nearly 70 days, he suppresses his emotions, relying on old coping mechanisms born from childhood trauma and loss.
Eventually, overwhelmed by the magnitude of the experience, he reaches a turning point he calls "flicking the switch" a metaphysical, emotional, and psychological decision to stop resisting the pain and allow himself to fully feel the grief.
***SPOILER END***
There is much to be found within, but I could not help myself when I latched onto one specific detail.
Real Men Don’t Cry
(Unless. Until. Except. However.)
Real men don’t cry.
That’s what they told you in locker rooms thick with sweat and silence, in garages with hands deep in grease, in churches built from pride and plywood, in houses where fathers folded feelings like laundry and tucked them away in the drawer marked "later."
But let me tell you, son, there is no drawer deep enough. No drawer strong enough. No drawer that won’t someday crack open under the weight
of everything you were never allowed to say.
Real men don’t cry until their daughter looks at them from a wheelchair throne, her gaze sharper than scalpels, and asks, “Why me?” And there’s no fix in your toolbox for broken spines or broken fate.
Real men don’t cry unless they wake at 3 a.m., the room still as a tomb, and hear the echo of her pain rattling the bones of the house. A phantom song of what was and what will never be again.
They say masculinity is stoic, a mountain unmoved, but I say it is the river, carving its truth through stone. It is not simply a clenched jaw but a heart forged in fire, and cooled in tears.
Because real men do cry. That is not a failure of strength young man, it is an exclamation of it. As the flood that clears the wreckage, as the baptism of resilience, and as the salt that seasons the meat of life.
This is a sermon to the sons with silence in their throats and fists clenched around what they were never allowed to feel. For feeling is for the feminine, they’re told. Just as they’re told to be masculine is to be evil.
I say screw that. All of it. It’s ALL nonsense. Spouted and spewed by the self-hating and the self-righteous. Those with anger in their hearts and malevolence in their deeds. I tend to remain in the “think what you want” camp of societal opinions and trends. But hands off these young men, they have been trampled enough from both sides.
Boys, when your world shatters, and it will, when you lose the job, the love, the dream, the way. Don’t just stand there like a statue with a soul.
Cry.
Yes, you. With the beard and the bruises. You, with the gravel voice and the broken knuckles. You, who’ve been told that tears are weakness and softness is surrender. Cry, and then keep building. Cry, and then lift her into the chair again. Cry, and then get back to sanding splinters out of the floor of a life you never planned to walk upon.
They want you silent so they can keep you safe. But safety is not the same as salvation. Real masculinity is not a muzzle. It’s a roar and a weep woven together
like sinew and soul. It’s knowing when to be still and when to strike. When to hold the line and when to fall apart so you can be rebuilt right.
A sword of iron, scarred, bent, perhaps cracked from the brutalities of battle, can be patched, yes. You can hammer it on the anvil, bind it with fire and flux, quench it in oil and willpower. You can reinforce its edge, mend the fracture, keep it swinging.
But the thing about patched swords is this: they remember. They hold the memory of the break. The weakness never quite leaves the blade. A patched sword might still strike, but it rings different when it hits bone or shield.
It carries a song of compromise.
To melt it down, though, to cast it anew, that is to admit the former shape has served its purpose. It is to kneel before the furnace of change and say: “Take all that I was, burn away the dross, and remake me stronger, truer, sharper.”
There’s no shame in reforging. Sometimes the steel must lose itself to find itself. Sometimes the identity must be consumed so the essence can survive.
So, should it be patched, or melted down? It depends on what you need it for. If you want the sword to last one more battle, patch it.
But if you want the sword to become something worthy of the ages,
of sons who will carry it after you, then melt it down. Offer it to the fire. And trust that what emerges will not just be a weapon, but a legacy.
Let me say this clear: Crying is not feminine. It is human. And to be fully human young man is to be fully masculine. The strength to feel is the spine beneath the muscle, the fire beneath the forge, the truth beneath the armor we were taught to wear but never taught to remove.
Your grief is a glacier. Let it melt. Let it flood your life and water something sacred. Your daughter will see it and know that men don’t have to die inside to love out loud. She will see you cry and she will know what it means to endure. What it means to be held by a man who does not hide from the brutal mercy of feeling.
She will learn not from your silence but from your trembling voice that says: “I hurt. I’m here. I’m still standing.”
So flick the switch, brother. You know the one. That small, invisible lever buried beneath the rubble of old codes and cold fathers. Flick it, and let the warmth rush through the corridors of your soul's winter palace.
Let the tears come. Let them salt the earth. Let them feed the fields where you will plant something new. Not in shame. But in sovereign, shining manhood. Because real men don’t cry? No. Real men cry and keep going.
Real men cry and lift the weight again. Real men cry and rebuild the world in the image of their compassion. Real men cry because love is heavier than steel, and holding it without breaking is the holiest thing we will ever do.
So cry. Then rise. And move. Because that’s what men do. That’s what we do.
And we do it with eyes still wet and hands still strong.
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It's not that real men don't cry. It's just that they don't cry in public.
Real men have emotions. They just tuck them away until they are alone or with the family.
Each time I've lost family members, I've held the pain until I was at home, then I cried.
It's just something that some men are trained to do.
Now, I would like to at least cast a quick glance toward the other side of this issue. Let me take what is said as a given but...
There is still a value in the expression "Big boys don't cry", even as applied to men. Having worked on the ambulance and in an emergency room... so seeing deadly circumstances both in the field and in the hospital... there is a very valid role for someone who, despite the fact there is something going on which could cause huge emotional upset, and the natural resulting lose of emotional control and behaviour... is able to control their behaviour and, at least, the way those emotions work themselves out. Is able to do the hard thing at the hard time cooly. Who can order men into their death in battle without losing control. Who can perform CPR on a four year old.
And in the context of the family there is a need for a strong man who can be the rock on which his family clings during times of crisis.
Jos 1:7 Only be thou strong and very courageous, that thou mayest observe to do according to all the law, which Moses my servant commanded thee: turn not from it to the right hand or to the left, that thou mayest prosper whithersoever thou goest.