Stuck in the sad

Have you been there? Stuck in the sad. It can be such a lonely place to be. Sometimes it makes perfect sense and we know exactly why we are there. Other times we are lost and confused and look around wondering if anyone can explain how we got there. The most important thing though is to know we are there and find our way out.

If you follow me then you know in June our extended family suffered an unimaginable loss. This came on the heels of me trying to process another loss of a childhood friend. I had not seen this friend in over 25 years, I don’t know his wife and I’ve never met his children. Yet I was crushed. The boy I knew was a good person, the man I saw everyone describing was still a good person. And I was sad. I knew it and I sought out a way to process it by helping. Just when I thought I had it under control, bam, a bombshell.

Man I thought I was sad before, but this time crushed didn’t even come close, more like devastated. I was sad, very, very sad. For days I just went through the motions of life, because we all know it doesn’t stop, but man it was hard. I was so confused and in disbelief that people we knew and loved were walking through this. I was also mad but I couldn’t even deal with that emotion because I was stuck right slap in the middle of sad. Then something amazing happened, at a funeral, yes a funeral. While I was so confused about how God had let this happened I witnessed amazing testimony to who God is even in tragedy and I started finding my way out of the sad.

There were some other things going on during this time that had me worried. Worry is not something I do much of but when you pile on the sad well it just got the best of me. Then my ever wise 21 year old daughter said to me “Mom you should get this bible study I did on worry. I think you will really like it”. And I did. I recently wrapped that six week study up and my spirit is renewed. I am no longer stuck in the sad. Although I will be transparent and say it was not easy. In fact at one point during this study I had a day where I was right back in the pit of my sad again except that time I didn’t even have a clue why. Just woke up that way I guess!

Here is what I’ve learned though, sometimes we are just going to be sad. It is an emotion and we are created to feel. The key is to not stay stuck there. We don’t say it nearly enough, in fact we outright try to ignore it. In ourselves and in others. But we need to just learn to say “I am sad”. We have to change that, we have to learn that it is okay to be sad. We have to acknowledge it because until we do we can’t process it.

Processing it now that could be an entire blog post or therapy session all by itself y’all; and that’s okay too! Sometimes we need to sit in our sad because if we don’t we can’t figure it out. It’s okay to sit in it for a bit, figure out how we got there, why we are there, and let ourselves grieve whatever it is that is making us sad. Grief is something else that is perfectly normal and we have to let ourselves do it, however that looks for us. This is how we process, we feel things, we think on them, we let our brains process them and we find our way past them. And you will find your way past it, I truly believe that even though I know there are times it just does not feel that way!

So if you feeling sad, say it! Say I am sad, acknowledge your sad, sit in your sad, process your sad and then find your way out of your sad. Just don’t get stuck in your sad!

~Carla