There was a heaviness, a depression of spirit I couldn’t shake. Waking in the morning with the weight of… what?... resting on my chest, followed by a desire to crawl back into the nothingness of unconsciousness. I thought the way to fight best was resting in the presence of Christ and the love He is always offering until the shadow lifted. And that was a good start, good to lean on the staff of his support step by step to get through days of unexplained unhappiness, inexplicable ineptitude. But even there, frustration began to build as I desperately wanted to shake off sadness. I thought the gloomy cloud would pass over me, but instead it rumbled into a thunderstorm until an inevitable downpour fell.
What do you do when an event takes place that is categorically “good,” yet alongside the joy you feel loss? After all, when a new era dawns, it means an old one has passed. Is it wrong to mourn? Shouldn’t we “forget what is behind, and strain toward what is ahead,” as the apostle Paul exhorts? What happens to our soul if we ignore the funeral and attend only to the future?
I have been experiencing life events lately that bring all these questions front and center. If you aren’t there yet, let me give you a peek: life with teenage children is a constant ride of highs and lows, twists, and loop de loops. But you’re not at an amusement park, you are smack in the middle of life. And it’s not that you’ve become your parents (that happened when they were toddlers and created the beautiful chaos of a family home), it is the weirdness that your children have become peers instead of the munchkins you have had underfoot for twenty years. Those sweet little people that you were never fully convinced would ever grow out of your home are the age you remember as being part of your adult years.
A constant montage on shuffle runs in the back of my mind as I interact with these young adults. The memories of hauling babies in and out of car seats, washing laundry after hundreds of rec league ball games, reading picture books over and over till memorized, tough hours of working through math, baking experiments, hair braiding, friendship crises, etc. etc. etc., plays through my mind on repeat as I see my children become a man or woman making decisions and entering the wide world. The same world, by the way, that I’ve been running interference on since that prophetic white stick showed two lines instead of one and I realized my life was going to alter forever and I had better change my diet. Phew.
All the Instagram stories of friends who walked this ahead of me didn’t help. Honestly, the crying emoji’s saying good-bye to a kid at college, or the oft repeated sentiment “they grow up so fast!” just made me determined to approach the transition of having young adult children with a more upbeat attitude. Just like we judge another’s parenting skills before we have any kids of our own, I knew I could do things differently! But every mom or dad reading this knows, you either go nuts trying to live up to your pre-kids ideal or you laugh at yourself for having thought your version of humanity was somehow exempt from the consequences of sleep deprivation and that petty desire to have a minute to yourself. So, it is with me now. I’m struggling with a new stage in life and gosh darn it, I wish I wasn’t.
But you know what doesn’t work? Wishing. Or for that matter, ignoring pain. Sometimes we can choose to shift our focus and find a better attitude rather than get stuck in the dumps, but when a loss has occurred and we don’t acknowledge it, depression soon follows. Choosing to look exclusively on the sunny side will drive us into overcast skies we may find difficult if not impossible to escape.
For me this is occurring within the context of parenting, but it could happen in a variety of life experiences. For example, receiving a promotion that moves you away from friends and family, getting married and losing friendships because of new priorities to your spouse, choosing to homeschool (or stop homeschooling) and missing the people and privileges you had in your old circle. There are myriad life circumstances that apply. Truly, saying hello to any new opportunity also asks us to say good-bye to people or places or self-identities we have come to love. We must acknowledge that this is a loss – a loss we have decided is worth the change, but a loss just the same. And I’m no psychologist, but I think when loss occurs and we don’t allow ourselves to grieve, it will bring emotional dysfunction.
I have “lost” a child living under the wings of my home to a beautiful marriage, I am currently preparing to lose another next spring to college, and I have lost friends who have moved due to new seasons in their amazing lives. I rejoice in all these “promotions,” seeing the hand of God actively working on behalf of the people I love most. But feeling the real loss of their presence and shedding tears over it, even acknowledging anger at times, doesn’t make me selfish or ungrateful or blind to all the good. Rather, stuffing the loss below false positivity and constantly reprimanding myself for feeling “negative” does eventually make me numb, depressed, and unable to enjoy all the “positive” feelings that go along with watching people I love thrive in new experiences.
As for the advice from Paul from Philippians 3:13, “Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead,” can easily be taken out of context. He was talking about our mistakes and sin and old selves living unredeemed and lost. We don’t have to live in that shame anymore. We can embrace the new creation we’ve become in Christ. A new creation that like Jesus himself, experiences all emotions including grief, sadness, joy, and peace.
The storm cloud broke over me on a Sunday afternoon after confessing to my sweet husband all my grief over the shifting circumstances of this year. I cried and cried, allowing sadness to rain down. I even fell asleep in the place of pain. But when I awoke… the clouds had parted.
I know some days the storms last longer, and sometimes the season of rains can threaten to flood our soul. But God isn’t casting shame on us in this space. In fact, we can sing with the Psalmist,
“You keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one in your book.”
Psalm 56:8
He uses every drop for future growth. When the sun returns, the fertile soil will undoubtedly spring up with new life.
As always you describe your thoughts, feelings and your search for truth with clarity and eloquence. Its ok to be sad... Love getting to hold your hand when your happy or sad.