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Crying in the Kitchen: When My Body Finally Caught Up

Crying in the Kitchen: When My Body Finally Caught Up

Last updated on: November 10, 2026 at 3:45 am by Stuart Delony

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Crying in the Kitchen: When My Body Finally Caught Up 2026-11-06T15:46:27-05:00 Stuart Delony

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Close-up of a man's bare feet dancing on a kitchen floor in warm early morning light, one foot raised mid-step.

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It was still dark when I found myself dancing in the kitchen with tears running down my face.

I was making breakfast and cleaning up, doing the usual morning routine before the rest of the world had properly woken up. Nothing remarkable was happening. Then a song came on and hit me sideways.

It was Spirits by The Strumbellas, a song I’d heard before. But this time, one line caught me completely off guard:

“I just want to be alive while I’m here.”

And I started crying. Hard.

The strange part was that I wasn’t particularly sad. There was joy in it, mixed with relief and something I couldn’t quite name. Whatever it was, it kept coming. Meanwhile, I was dancing around the kitchen like a grown man auditioning for a musical nobody had agreed to finance.

What happened in that kitchen had started three months earlier.

Watching a Movie I Wasn’t In

About a year ago, I experienced a breakthrough in therapy. Buried memories began resurfacing, and things I hadn’t fully understood about my own past started making sense.

It was like watching an old movie of my own life. I could see what was happening, but I wasn’t inside it. I recognized how the events connected to other parts of my life.

But emotionally, I felt removed from it all.

One memory led to another, and those connections opened up still more. There was a lot to absorb, and some of it changed how I understood my own history.

You might expect something like that to come with an immediate emotional collapse. Tears, anger, grief, or some dramatic moment of realization. That’s certainly how the movies would handle it. There would be a swelling soundtrack and perhaps a meaningful stare out a rain-streaked window.

Instead, I understood what had happened. I could talk about it and recognize patterns. But much of the emotional weight seemed to be somewhere else.

For three months.

And then, while making breakfast, it showed up.

A Different Kind of Release

I’ve experienced what some call somatic discharge before. For me, those episodes have usually been unpleasant, sometimes intensely so. My body reacts in ways that feel disconnected from whatever I’m doing at the time. It’s unsettling to have a physical response you can’t simply reason your way out of.

But the kitchen was different. There was no panic attached to the tears. What I felt was an inexplicable sense of joy and relief.

I’d spent months understanding something intellectually, and then suddenly I was feeling something I hadn’t been able to access before.

The memories hadn’t changed. My relationship to them had.

When Numbness Passes for Maturity

When I cried as a child, my father exploded. His face would stiffen with disgust and disdain. That look was the farthest thing from seeing me.

He was also chairman of the deacons and taught adult Sunday school for decades. To me, he was church.

I spent more than two decades in ministry, and I recognized that same lesson dressed in theological language.

There was a ready-made explanation for whatever someone was feeling. Anger became bitterness. Doubt became rebellion. Questioning your leaders became questioning God. Trusting your instincts became leaning on your own understanding. If you were hurting, there was a spiritual lesson you were supposed to be learning from it.

And if you weren’t learning that lesson quickly enough, someone was happy to explain it to you.

That training served me well in ministry. I learned to be composed and steady, to have the answers ready, and to never crack in front of people.

Numbness passed for maturity.

I Want to Be Alive While I’m Here

The line from Spirits kept coming back to me long after the music ended. The song deals with some dark territory, including the struggle to live with what’s happening inside your own head. What caught me was the desire to experience the life we’re already living.

And I couldn’t help thinking about how much of the Christianity I inherited was built around postponing that experience.

We were constantly preparing for another life. Heaven was the destination. Eternity was the reward. This existence was temporary, broken, and something to endure while waiting for the real thing.

There’s an odd contradiction in telling people that life is a precious gift from God while spending so much time reminding them that the best part starts after they’re dead.

It’s possible to become so preoccupied with everlasting life that you forget to participate in the one you’re living.

And that brings me back to the kitchen.

I’m still working through things, and I expect that to continue. But for once, an emotional release didn’t feel like another ordeal I needed to survive. There was joy in it. There was room to move, to cry, and to experience something without immediately trying to explain it away.

Three months earlier, I had watched the memories of my life play out like an old movie. I could see it, but I wasn’t inside it.

Then, in a dark kitchen, with breakfast waiting, I was finally back inside the picture.

And I was dancing.

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About Stuart Delony

I’m Stuart Delony, a former pastor who walked out of the church but couldn’t shake the ways of Jesus. These days, I host Snarky Faith—a podcast and platform that wrestles with faith, culture, and meaning from the fringe. I’m not here to fix Christianity. I’m here to name what’s broken, find what’s still worth keeping, and hold space for the questions that don’t have clean answers. If you’ve been burned, disillusioned, or just done with the noise—welcome. You’re in good company. You can read more about the author here.

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