The Practice of Sadness

I’ve been waking up sad lately.  Actually, it’s been going on for months.  I bet you can relate.  It’s been a hard year.  There have been so many losses, so many things that we can’t do, people we can’t see, family that has to stay away.  All our summer plans were cancelled.  There were many gifts in this season and so in my extrovert way, I have tried so hard to train myself to just be grateful and focus on all that I have and all that I have learned in this season. And force myself to just be happy and grateful. 

I go to bed with my mind set.  I am going to be happy in the morning.  I am making the decision to be happy.  I will be optimistic.  I won’t be the opposite and be pessimistic.  Isn’t that what we’ve been taught?  That the opposite of optimistic is pessimistic? Take captive every thought?

Not sure if any of you are also listening to the BEMA podcast.  My husband is a little obsessed.  It is a wonderful podcast and helps to pose a lot of great questions.  One of the ideas that repeats itself in the podcast is, “What is wrong with this story”?  I like this question.  It gives me a little permission to push back on ideas that I know I am supposed to just accept, but somewhere in my soul I just feel uneasy about.  Something in me is just not settled and I can’t figure out what. 

So even after all the scriptures in, like they are some magic pill that will fix who I feel if I just read enough, I wake up sad.  Sadness had moved slowly into my room sometime in the middle of the night, and wound herself up like a kitten, snuggled up close to my chest.  I wake up with her there, so close to me, still sleeping.  I lay in bed for a few minutes trying to decide what to do about her.  Do I kick her out of bed?  Do I shoo her away, sure that I have everything to be grateful for and so I should be happy?  For weeks, really months, I have gotten up, tried to leave her behind, and tried to set my mind on happier things. 

Yet every morning, there she is.  I have started to work on trying to understand, why is she here?  What I am sad about?  Maybe if I understand, then I can process the sadness and she won’t show up anymore.  It was my goal.  But it was not the practice that God had planned for me.  

The other day, I realized that when I wake up and feel joy, I don’t try to sneak away from her.  I don’t demand a reason for her to be there.  I am fine with whatever reason she is there, in fact, I’m fine with no reason at all.  Yippee!  Joy is here. 

What if I didn’t demand a reason for sadness to be here.  What if when I woke, and I found her snuggled up close to me, sleeping deeply, what if I didn’t try to sneak away, outrun her.  But I picked her up, and snuggled her back.  Held her close.  Accepted her for who she is.  She may have something to say to me.  Maybe there is something to process, something to practice.  But maybe she just needed to be close.  No specific reason, just needed intimacy, to be looked at.  To be silent with.  What if I told her she could stay through my day.  If I let her be part of who I am, all day long, with no judgement, so resentment for her presence. 

This is the practice.  Practicing all the emotions.  All our emotions are acceptable to God.  All of them.  Is there some emotion that comes back to you over and over again?  Is it sadness?  Fear?  Alienated?  Suspicious?  What would it look like if you didn’t try and banish it to the closet of unacceptable feelings?  What if you allowed yourself to be with it, just sit with it, find out what it has to say?  Or just sit in silence with it?  To enter the practice room with it….