On Sadness

Advent, and an Animal Shed

On Sadness

I do believe in order for us to find beauty and enjoyment among the common and ordinary routines of this life, and for us to cultivate deep lasting relationships, we have to be connected to our own hearts. That means we have to feel fully. Anger, Sadness, Loneliness, Hurt, Shame, Guilt, Gladness. All of them. Of these, I have the hardest time with sadness. I can recognize something as being sad, but feeling it doesn’t come easy, especially if it is my own life. Feeling my own sadness is hard for me. I believe this is so because I’ve been training myself to not feel the sadness around my own life for most of my existence. Most people do not instinctively allow a child to sit in their sadness. Most adults do not hold space for children to be with their sadness. Rather the opposite is true. Adults do what they can to divert the child’s attention away from what is making them sad, shush them gently to shorten the tears, and reassure them that everything will be ok. I was that child and I am/have been that adult. And so, I divert my attention away from sadness, hold back any tears, and tell myself everything is OK.

This isn’t the way. Sadness is a gift. If you short-circuit sadness you short-circuit Joy, Intimacy, Connection.

I’ve been trying to feel my sadness lately. The problem is, the tears bubble up at the wrong time, and it scares me. I know that if I keep searching for the tears so that I can truly feel what is deep inside me, they will eventually build and come with a force that I won’t be able to hold back, audience be damned. This almost happened while in church on Sunday. My family was among the last ones to come forward and take the bread and wine from the Lord’s table. After walking down the center aisle and curling left to walk along the side, back up to our seats, I saw my friend - a man older than me who has loved me well and poured into me for reasons I have minimal clue. In this moment he looked older, more feeble, but as always his eyes were full of love and acceptance. I hugged him and instantly tears began to push up. Why? I don’t know. But if I had let go I could have easily wept in his arms. I didn’t want to make a scene and I didn’t have a reason to be weeping. So I quickly shut down the tears, any thought of letting go, and meandered back to my seat wondering what that was about.

This may sound silly to you. It feels a little silly writing it. (It helps that I am listening to Ludovico Eunaudi 👇 while doing so.) Perhaps someone reading this will resonate with it and will allow themselves to feel the sadness they have been pushing away…

The voice in my head is telling me that I’m being dramatic, that my life is great (it is) and that I should focus on the positive. It tells me that feeling my sadness won’t change the things I’m sad about (it won’t) and that the readers of these words will cringe inside.

Then, I think about the kind of relationships I want - deep, honest, connected. I think about the dozens of daily moments that can easily be brushed off as mundane, yet I know there is beauty and holiness found within them. I remember why I’m choosing to pursue connection with my own heart and sharing the message with you - because a numb world is a grey world, and I for one am tired of grey.

On Advent

Growing up, my family never emphasized Advent. About 5 years ago, Morgan and I decided to try reading a little bit from an Advent book each night with the kids. Since then, we have tried each year to clear our evenings and make time each night to be with the kids. So far, what that actually looks like has been different each year. Some years it has been a song, a candle, and a quick devotional style reading. Other years it has been a serial style story. What has stayed the same is the effort and intention required to preserve and guard the time we have together each night. And this is why I love Advent. It forces us to slow down and build our evenings around quietly being together. For me, the weeks and days leading up to Christmas go by quickly and honoring the season of advent is precisely the medicine I need. It might just be my favorite thing about Christmas.

On an Animal Shed

The animal shed started as an idea, as almost all things do. Over time, the idea morphed into a nice gable roof barn with a shop for all my tools. But after some mental massaging the idea came back to the original idea of a three sided animal shed of sorts. Pretty simple construction and something I can do myself. The land has been clear for over a year and the pad in place for almost that long. It has taken me a while to get to the shed build because I’ve had a couple other projects in line ahead of it, but all the while, the vision of the barn shed has been floating around in my head.

This past weekend I got the first post up and the feeling was a blend of excitement and pride. It was odd to me honestly. It was just a single post but after putting it up, I immediately went inside and grabbed Morgan to show her. She was less than overwhelmed but shared my excitement.

Naturally, I’m not patient, and the animal shelter has been in process for almost two years. Now, finally, we have started going vertical. I think it is a milestone worth celebrating.