Sadness comes in all sizes. Sometimes it’s huge and powerful, a villain worthy of a heroic, medical take-down, and other times it’s just a quiet lump in the throat. Sadness can come on gradually or flash like winter lightning. It sets us up for failure, affecting both the body and spirit. It can surely be contagious. 

And sometimes sadness is exactly the right thing. 

Americans might believe that sadness is the negative detour that keeps us from the unrelenting prosperity and happiness we deserve. We are ashamed of it as though it reveals some weakness, and we attempt to cure it as quickly as it comes. Yet what if the role of sadness firmly belongs in the natural order of things? 

So as a tribute to the month that is colder and darker than the rest, I offer some considerations:

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I struggle with what I call the shadow: my name for that sudden darkening of my inner vision, the acedia or spiritual apathy, the gray and muffling pall of depression. Sometimes it is mercifully absent from my inner horizon for days or weeks; other times it is hovers, vaguely threatening, in my peripheral vision.

I’ve tried fighting back: asserting, in the face of crippling self-doubt, that I have so much evidence of my own accomplishments that the shadow is absurd. Unfortunately, the positive-thinking route does not work. It has been more effective to accept the reality of the feeling while intellectually recognizing that it is based on a lie, a distortion of reality. Better yet has been to also offer up my sadness to the Lord in prayer, and turn my thoughts deliberately toward gratitude for all the good things in my life, which are many – to be grateful, even if I don’t feel happy.

As I write this, it’s October, the Southern California summer finally shading into fall. A year ago I was feeling very low, physically and mentally exhausted and ill. What was worse than feeling tired and sick was what I came to think of as “the shadow.” When the shadow fell on me, it was as if all the color washed out of the world. My accomplishments – meaningless. The work that I was trying to do – a waste of time. My need for friendship – pathetic and sad. Why bother? It became difficult to do anything under the shadow. I had trouble getting myself even to eat at times; it seemed hardly worth the effort.  

And all of this, it is important to note, at a time when my ministry work, teaching, and writing were by all accounts successful. I knew that my lecturing at church was well received, because people would come up and tell me how much they appreciated it.

I’ve woken to a cloudy disposition and wearied motivation today, feeling body deep in a pocket of depression, whereby compulsions feel like my only way out. Feasts on narcotics of control, productivity, food, release, sleep, isolation, and so forth, feel like my only saving grace. And yet, God seems to be drawing me toward something more—or maybe less.

By His grace, I can only surmise, I’ve lost my voice. Never before plagued by such a condition, it’s a new state of depravity for me, as one prone to words, and “explaining” my way out-of, into, or through modes of my true self, and situation. Who am I without my voice? How do I represent myself? How do I show who I am to people, or talk my way through the pains of my soul this hour? Or could it be, that there really is another way—that really is an I beyond me without a voice, or me as an addict, or depressed saint?

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In the Greek pantheon of emotions, Love has the power of Zeus, Compassion is the lovely Aphrodite, and Anger kicks butt like Ares—but Sadness? He’s just a hated Cyclops, weeping out of that one ugly eye, a monster that nobody likes at all.

Sadness is the emotion that Americans like to eliminate right away. If our children are sad, we try to fix them with candy and distractions. If our best friend has the blues, we invite him to Happy Hour. A spouse feeling down? Well, here’s some shopping money, a round of golf, maybe a massage. We are uncomfortable with sadness; it’s such a downer to everyone in its radius.

Poets seem to understand the beauty of sadness better than the rest of us, but some are really just happy pretending they are sad. Bands like Atreyu (who sing lines like It only hurts when I breathe) capitalize on youthful angst with an almost self-conscious joy, and when the Smiths sing  My gut is burning.  Won't you find me some water? / Hey,just forget it . . . Can you bring me gasoline?  their hyper-tragic lines betray a twisted kind of happiness

Yet John Donne, a profound 16^th century metaphysical poet whom I reckon never wore an emo haircut or painted his fingernails black, wrote “Affliction is a treasure and scarce any man hath enough of it.”  I believe he was closer to getting at the real paradox of sadness: that when we try to kill suffering too quickly, we short circuit the natural order of things.

And what is the natural order of things? It’s first moving in rhythm to Ecclesiastes chapter 3, where there is a time for everything under the sun. It’s experiencing both suffering and joy, the juxtaposition of which ultimately defines both. It’s found in the book of James which makes the audacious claim, “Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him.”

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