The Thing About Being Sad

“You aren’t who you are all the time.”

At least that’s the case according to Lisa Feldman Barrett, professor of Psychology at Northern University. She goes on to say, “you have a vocabulary of the self, a range of people who you become.”

This idea seems familiar and comforting to me, like an NPR-ish way of saying what Paul does in Romans 7:

It happens so regularly that it’s predictable. The moment I decide to do good, sin is there to trip me up. I truly delight in God’s commands, but it’s pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight. Parts of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge (v21-23, MSG).

I find that I often write from a certain disposition; it’s the observant, insightful, idealistic, convicted of a greater good/hope/purpose “self” that cranks out most of the essays. Interspersed between city drama and heartfelt narratives is the funny/snarky “self," and then we have the dormant chef "self" with an occasional recipe to share. That last one hasn’t surfaced in a while, mainly because it’s summer and we’ve been surviving on a steady diet of sandwiches, processed carbohydrates, and chicken nuggets. Lord have mercy on our digestive tracts.

But the melancholy part of me, the one who recently told my husband, “my problem is that I feel like a failure from the moment I get up in the morning and it just goes downhill from there”....that one doesn’t write much.

“I think that’s called depression,” he responded.

I think he’s probably right. And depression wants to run away and hide. It loves isolation, so naturally, it doesn’t have a voice. Or pen many essays. 

I’m not sure when it happened in our society, but sadness became “negative” and uncomfortable. It doesn’t jive well with perky status updates, 140 character one-liners, or pretty pictures of home decor and flowers, although I’ve deliberately tried to juxtapose the two. The fact is, no one likes a Debbie Downer, and deep down, everyone wants to be liked.

I think what make sadness so uncomfortable is we don’t know what to do with it, especially if the person has no obvious reason for feeling sad. Then, it’s just...awkward. Sometimes, there are no bandages or platitudes or commiserating that will help. It just is what it is.

Sunshine helps. Talking to people helps. Getting enough sleep helps. So does laughing.

But the thing about being sad? It’s okay.

It’s okay to be sad. The reality is, the world we live in is not all rainbows and unicorns, unless your world is a Starbucks frappachino. Or a bag of skittles.

It’s also okay to not know what to say to someone who’s sad. It’s okay to not have all the answers or know how to fix it. Believe it or not, that was never in our job description. I don’t know that people long to be fixed so much as they long to be heard and loved, and that goes for any emotion or situation.

As much as I’d love to be the encouraging person who’s noticing the many footprints of God in my mundane daily life, the truth of the matter is I’m also the person who wakes up and feels like I’m failing at all aspects of life before I’ve even had a cup of coffee, and there’s simply no encouragement to give. But sadness doesn’t negate the presence of God, even if He’s a little harder to see, and I’m realizing that maybe this other part of me should write.

That maybe, she has something to say, too.

I’ve tried everything and nothing helps. I’m at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn’t that the real question?

The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does. He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different. (Romans 7:24-25, MSG)

For when you suck at managing a home

“Now, I don’t want you to feel bad about this, but you’re not very good about asking for help. Like, instead of just cancelling an appointment, for example, remember you have an army of people who could help with the kids so you can keep your commitments.”

I had just told him I don’t know how other people do it -- life, that is -- without constantly feeling like they're drowning. Because I do. All the time. There’s clutter on the floor and any flat surface, laundry piled on the couch, and a sink overflowing with dishes, not to mention the list of neglected phone calls that would rival the very List of Santa himself.

“For some reason, you tend to function as if you have to do it all, and you don’t! You need to somehow figure out how to delegate things and manage your environment.”

Yes… I thought. That’s it.

Good, freeing tears welled up in my eyes as the truth cut straight to my heart. “You’re totally right, and I don’t know why I didn’t see it before. Instead of asking for help, I run around like a crazy woman trying to do everything myself, and not only does nothing get done, but no one wants to be around me because I’m stressed. Instead of commanding my environment, I let it control me.”

When we manage our environment, we turn stress into rest by commanding our surroundings instead of letting them control us. But sometimes it feels impossible to do so...

I realized I’d been a victim of my own life for the past year as I struggled to manage a household of seven, a new puppy, and an unrelenting case of postpartum depression. Often overwhelmed and underwater, I allowed my environment, with the eager aid of imbalanced hormones, to make a puppet out of my emotional health. Depression blinds you to the life it slowly skims from the till, leaving you wholly unaware of the richness stolen until you wake up one day, bankrupt.

Once the cloud finally begins to lift, you can see how far depression actually dragged you from your true self, how it made a jack-o-lantern of you, gradually hollowing out the interior and leaving you with a stupid, fake grin, yet completely empty inside. But pumpkins are seasonal, like anything else under the sun, and there will be a time for it to die and for something new to grow in its place.

We have the bar set pretty low around here, but now that it’s February, we decided to pack Christmas up and put the tree away. With over a week to spare before the next official holiday, I call that a win. Even though spring is still a ways away, I can feel change blowing in on the wind. The sun is brighter, the air more fresh. Birds are trickling back into town, and before we know it, there will be other evidence of new life all around us.

Joy comes with the morning much like winter yields spring, and the pumpkins won’t keep forever. For all of you fake-grinners, I pray that your cloud begins to lift today. And even if it doesn’t, I pray the Lord will hold and sustain you until a tomorrow dawns with the new life of spring.

Walking in Humility: The Angry Stress Monster

I have this thing my son calls the “Angry Stress Monster," an apt description, as it will suddenly rear its nasty head without warning, much like I imagined the monsters under my bed would when I was young. 

Usually, the symptoms have been festering below the surface long before they're noticed by the droves of screaming and fighting children running about the house, but they all notice when the switch flips--a maternal Jekyll and Hyde with a messy top knot, yesterday's sweatpants, and crazy eyes. Or maybe it's more like mommy Frankenstein, who, after having all her brains removed by a litter of children, can only scream, growl, and try to kill things. Little things. More specifically, little people.

Some days, I don't do a very good job of containing the monster.

The offenses against sanity begin to stack up the moment we walk in the door after school. It’s the pent-up cackling crazy they’ve had to control all day. It’s the running and fighting and making each other cry. It’s the deafening noise level composed of mommy look at this and mommy we did this and mommy sign that and mommy I want a snack and mommy I need help….all at once.

I’m on the edge. On the verge of losing it. Lately, I’ve gotten to the point where I recognize this edge, the ledge from which I plunge head first into the oblivion of rage and overwhelm. The fall is incredibly hard to recover from.

I know what it feels like, the tightness in my chest. The mental jitters that make it impossible to think. The overloaded circuit of my faculties, sparks flying, fires starting, the whole thing burning down.

I can feel it begin, and I try to breathe deep. To take a step back, calm down. But sometimes life keeps assaulting me, and I can’t keep it at bay. The Angry Stress Monster emerges from the flames of spontaneous combustion, and everyone nearby gets burned.

Sometimes I don’t recognize this woman, this angry monster in the mirror. I hope to find the calmer, more patient person I once knew, I really do.

But I guess until then, I’m sorry.

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This post is part of a series I’m writing for the month of October called, Walking in Humility: Learning to Abide with God in the Everyday. If you’re interested in the reading the rest of the series, you can find it here. Enjoy!

Walking in Humility: When Life Is Stressful

Today is a trash can full of crumpled rough drafts that didn’t make the cut.

Pressed for time, many to-dos, forgetful.

Left late, wrong turns, detours.

Rushed, stressed, chaos.

Disobedience, repeating, frustration.

Hyper children, dog poop, baby fingers.

Play outside, space to think, it’s always something.

Car climbing, dog escaping, dinner burning.

Wet baby, dog water, playing with garbage.

Sassy son, too many kids, can’t catch a break.

Can’t catch my breath.

Lost my mind.

Check under the sofa. It could be under there with a dirty diaper, the TV remote we can never find, Lego blocks, and action figures.  Maybe a dog toy or two. Some old underwear? A baby binky? I guess you never know.

Or we could dig through the dirty dishes in the sink. Maybe I dropped it in there with the soggy Cheerios from breakfast this morning. It could be in the tall stack of pots, as well. The one with the leftover pasta sauce rotting inside.

We should shuffle through the stack of school papers on the counter and flash cards that didn’t get rehearsed today. Or any day this week. Or last. Maybe it’s by the book order I forgot about or the one thousand handouts about parties, dress-down days, concerts, meetings, and projects due. Perhaps it accidentally got buried in there.

What about the four hampers of clean clothes I have yet to fold? It’s possible that my mind just fell on out and landed in there as I walked by. I doubt I would’ve noticed its absence as I frantically ran out the door after the dog. A revolving door would be nice because closing it seems too much of a chore for those that come and go here.

Maybe the mental haze I feel is due to the fact that it’s baking in the oven with the potatoes I put in about an hour ago. With all the pieces of my mind I’ve handed out today, what remains is probably about the size of a potato, so it would’ve blended in nicely.

Let me know if you find it.

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This post is part of a series I’m writing for the month of October called, Walking in Humility: Learning to Abide with God in the Everyday. If you’re interested in the reading the rest of the series, you can find it here. Enjoy!