Our Tears Are Precious to Jehovah ... and Worth Every Drop

A friend sent me an Awake article entitled "Your Mysterious Tears" that said there are 3 types of tears: basal tears (to keep the eyes lubricated), reflex tears (produced in response to irritants like smoke or onions), and emotional tears (shed in response to feelings of sadness, joy, or other strong emotions). Emotional tears contain a 24% higher protein concentration than reflex tears. That got me wondering, why are emotional tears swimming in more protein?

Several different AI chatbots helped me understand:

Imagine you've got a cut on your knee. Your body sends special proteins to the cut to help it heal, right? Well, emotional tears are kind of like that. When you're feeling strong emotions, your body releases these special proteins in your tears. Scientists think these proteins might be helping your body deal with the emotions. So, emotional tears have more proteins because they're doing extra work, helping you process your feelings!

Emotional tears are like a full-blown therapy session for your eyeballs.

Your brain is basically sending out a chemical SOS signal. This signal not only causes you to cry but also changes the chemical makeup of your tears. These extra proteins in emotional tears could be playing a few different roles:

-Stress Relief: Some scientists believe these proteins may help remove stress hormones, essentially acting as a physiological release valve. So crying might literally be a way to flush out negative emotions!

-Mood Regulation: Crying can trigger the release of endorphins, those feel-good chemicals that help soothe us.

Another contributing factor is the presence of leucine-enkephalin, a natural painkiller. Think of it as a tiny, tear-shaped pain relief pill. By releasing this opioid-like substance, emotional tears can help to alleviate the physical and psychological discomfort associated with strong emotions.

Emotional tears contain higher levels of adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH), a hormone linked to stress. By shedding ACTH, your body might be attempting to regulate hormonal balance and bring you back to a state of equilibrium. It’s like a little internal reset button, conveniently located in your tear ducts.

Emotional tears tend to feel warmer and stickier than reflex tears.

Teardrops are unique, each one looks different under a microscope. We're leaking little salty snowflakes out of our face, how amazing! ❄️

Moral of the story: embrace the weep! Don't fear the Ugly Cry! Tears are worth every drop, biochemically cleansing us from the inside out. They're an awesome gift to help us cope, and they're so precious to Jehovah that he stands close by to catch them to collect into his bottle, and writes down in his book the feelings that we cry out with our tears. (Psalms 56:8) 😭

Soon he will wipe away all our sad tears forever!! (Isaiah 25:8, Revelation 21:4) When someone wipes a tear away from your face, there’s no trace of it anymore. And I love how those scriptures say God himself wipes away our tears. That’s so tender -- his hand on our face, wiping away our sad tears once and for all. He will remove everything that causes physical and emotional pain, all of the problems that can make life seem hopeless today.