What is your first thought when I mention sadness? I’m guessing most of you are thinking “Oh no, not a depressing blog! I can do without that, and especially not on a sunny day!”
Amongst other emotions, when God made happiness, He made sadness too!
So what is sadness? Sadness is an emotional pain that usually has a clear cause, such as losing a loved one, being given a difficult diagnosis, failure at something we pinned our hopes on and the feeling of what could have been or the end of something that won’t return….often the end of a valuable relationship or friendship. It is a very natural emotion and we generally feel sadness about a loss that is permanent and cannot be changed. More often than not, it causes us to value our lives and what we have or had. I want to make it clear that I am not referring to depression here. Depression is an illness or state which involves a longer period of time of severe and overwhelming sadness and hopelessness.
There are lots of reasons we can feel sad and my goal here is not to make you feel unhappy, but to encourage you to embrace sadness and make peace with it. Being sad doesn’t mean you’re not coping with something, it actually enables you to come to terms with it more. It also enables us to recognise the fact that it is not natural to pursue and feel happiness all the time. Happiness is a great emotion but it also ebbs and flows. In embracing sadness, we give ourselves permission to not always be ok.
Right from a very young age, we are told to cheer up if we ever feel sad. Passive phrases like “chin up” and “you’ll be fine” are really unhelpful. When at school, we were often discouraged from feeling sad and throughout life it’s been modelled to us that it’s something to be avoided.
Many people feel fear about sadness and prefer not to talk about anything that could steal away their “happy feeling”. I understand people not wanting to dig up a well of emotion but I believe sadness is made to be felt and not ignored. So often, prevention of those moments of sadness, can cause it to build up into a huge knot of emotion within us that then makes us more “hard” and can affect our ability then to feel joy too. As Ann Voskamp rightly says in her book, The Broken Way, “pain demands to be felt – or it will demand you feel nothing at all”. We don’t need to be afraid of falling into depression when we feel natural sadness…the Bible says
“Cast your cares on the Lord and he will sustain you, he will never let the righteous be shaken” Psalm 55:22
I think two enormous benefits of acknowledging sadness are that it enables you to have compassion on yourself, to understand the hardships you’ve faced and where you’re at in your life now, which in turn often causes a person to make fresh goals and to have compassion on others. It also enables you to honour those you’ve lost, by allowing yourself to think about them, even though it makes you feel sad. It usually moves towards us like a wave, washes over us and dissipates. Allowing ourselves to feel it through this short recurring and momentary process, grounds us more about where we’re at in our lives and enables us to continue to come to terms with it.
Many times I’ve seen people have a glimpse of sadness in their eyes when sharing with me about something and “throw it off” because they don’t want to feel it or because they don’t want to bring me down, but each time we allow ourselves to feel sad, we are processing it and enabling ourselves to heal. It’s an emotion I feel we need to make peace with within our lives and then we will not allow fear to attach itself to it. It’s actually really healthy to feel it and also helpful to share with others as it gives them a deeper understanding of who we are and what we’ve been through. In listening to other’s sadness, we’re able to empathise because we understand what sadness is and what it feels like.
2 Corinthians 1:3-4 says “All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is our merciful Father and the source of all comfort. He comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others. When they are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us.”
It’s hard as Christians because there’s always this stigma that we should be constantly joyful. As a result, it often makes a person feel guilty about sharing something that sounds “negative” but as you can see in the previous scripture, God knows that we will be sad at times and need comfort. I don’t think for a second that Jesus felt joyful when he was on the cross. I think God feels sad when He looks at so much in our world. To feel sad is real and authentic. What a strange and plastic world we would live in if we were happy all the time, never feeling our deepest emotions. It would be so shallow. Do I tell the people who have lost babies in the recent story in the news to be happy all the time? No, they have deep grief and will always feel sad when they think of their lost child and the things they could have shared. It’s still important for them to think of that beautiful baby and feel sad for their own loss and the life that that child will never have. Should I ignore that story because it makes me feel sad and I can do without that in my life? No, because it IS deeply sad. and whilst I am not directly involved, it still makes me feel sad to think about what happened…as I’m sure it does many people. Grief and sadness are of course different emotions but both need to be felt to enable us to process them in some way…some grief and sadness will never heal but experiencing it does help us emotionally.
I’m not suggesting that we should walk around in sadness all the time…when that wave of sadness comes, allow yourself to feel it and after a while it will pass. Sometimes, we have mixed emotions when remembering someone…sometimes I think of my Dad and smile or chuckle, sometimes I think of him and feel sad. I feel that both emotions honour and remember him and also validate how much I miss him.
God created sadness for a reason. I don’t believe it’s just a result of living. I believe He uses it to heal us and to help us realise what we value within our lives. Often if we can’t acknowledge how sad we are, we get stuck and struggle to try new adventures. If you failed at something you really thought was going to be lifechanging it can prevent you from moving on. Allowing yourself to feel the sadness and disappointment when it comes can help you to slow down and make fresh decisions to try again or pursue something else in your life.
The Bible says that “The Lord is close to all whose hearts are crushed in pain.” Psalm 34:18a TPT. In Matt 11:28 “Then Jesus said “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens and I will give you rest.”
Jesus understands sadness. He was rejected by His closest friends, shamed by the whole city when hung upon the cross and separated from his Father. He can do what you and I can’t…he can sit with you in the depths of your sadness and with him you can pour the tears of your heart into his hands. There is nothing he does not understand. He has sat with millions upon millions of people in their sadness.
I encourage you to allow those waves of sadness to wash over you when you feel them, be kind to yourself and acknowledge those things that are difficult in your life and rest in the comfort of the wings of God until it dissipates.
Psalm 91: “His massive arms are wrapped around you, protecting you.” TPT “He will cover you with his feathers. He will shelter you with his wings” NLT.
He’s got you.
Face in the Sunlight 