According to one marketing company, Monday was the most depressing day of the year. They have a formula and everything:
It’s undoubtedly BS, and multiple sources confirm that, but it makes a lot of sense. They dubbed it “Blue Monday” because:
It’s among the coldest days of the year;
It’s after the holidays so everyone is broke;
The sunlight is weird and brief, and, of course;
It’s a Monday.
I’ve been thinking about Blue Monday for about a month. Why? Well, the holidays were rough. There were some very bright spots, but let’s just say it was less than ideal. I was somewhat worried that the post-holiday return to reality would be rougher.
However, I was thinking mainly of multiple friends and some family going through their own custom-made Crucibles. Depression is a factor in many of them.
I’m trying to be at least a kind presence in their lives. I try to be a guide when I can, but people in the midst of that dark fog literally see things differently. Their vision is occluded. I’ve been through most of what they’re going through, but I can’t make them see what I can see. So, I remember the love and support I’ve received along the way, and I try to share some of that with them. If I can be for them what others have been for me, I’ll have lived a worthwhile life.
I had another great—and extremely active—weekend with the kids. (Three of them, anyway. The oldest couldn’t make it because he’s taking driving lessons.) It’s always non-stop talking, usually four conversations at once, playing horsey (my horse persona is an old Palomino named “Grunty,”) and wrestling. Oh yeah, and Nerf gun battles.
When I picked them up, my oldest daughter told me, “Get ready to lose the use of your hands.” This was, of course, a prophecy she fulfilled. Her little hand holds mine literally every time we’re in the same room with each other.
On Mondays, the monastery returns to the place of quiet solitude and prayer. My children are far away. You can imagine how that can feel.
As I gather their bedding for the wash I usually find little things they’ve left behind. Drawings, of course. Dragons and deer and puppies and rainbows. The meticulously crafted notes and plans on my whiteboard are usually obliterated with messages like, “Best. Daddy. Ever.” Lots of hearts, too.
There’s always one sock. Just one. They’ve usually outgrown them by the time I can return the socks.
This Monday, the Blue Monday, was different, though. It was about three degrees outside (3!), and the inch or so of snow that fell the day before created a vast, multi-faceted, crystalline rainbow plain under a brilliant blue sky. In other words, a perfect day for a prayer rope walk with a big cup of steaming hot coffee. I followed the fox tracks and said the Jesus Prayer for me and for my wife, for all of us, and thought, This is already a great day.
It was gorgeous. I missed my little ones, but the story isn’t over yet. Good things are coming.
I attribute this Awesome Monday vibe to grace, of course, but I’m not just a passenger on this ride. I had choices and I gave myself the power to choose one. I chose the one I know to be good, an unthinkable power not so many months or years ago.
I’m also very aware that my problems are fairly tame compared to others. For example, I have a buddy who is just beginning his own tour through the Crucible. He has dealt with depression his whole life, too, and the card he was dealt last weekend would test any man. His persistent depression is like a festering wound that doesn’t heal, and it will likely be the locus of his contest going forward. But, I think, it will also be the source of his victory if he orients himself properly to it, responds well, and learns to rise above it.
The obstacle is the way, says Marcus Aurelius and Ryan Holiday…
He asked me, the other night night as he was on an impromptu, head-clearing road trip, how I tame the Black Dog. After all, I seem so chipper publicly.
I’ve been working on an answer that I can give to men in the midst of darkness—kind of like an elevator speech. I’m still working on it. There’s the short, utterly true but impenetrable and seemingly impossible answer, and then there’s the book-length answer filled with practical/tactical advice. (Publishing sometime soon).
The call was nearing its end, so I believe I blurted out something like this and hoped it was mostly true:
Stop. Stand tall. Breathe deep. Get active. Get some sun on your face. Pray.
Perhaps more than anything else, don’t try to do everything at once. His situation is a big, hairy one that will likely take years to resolve and, most likely, will result in a life he hadn’t planned for himself.
And that is one of the biggest keys to beating depression, at least for us churchy types. Planning is good. Taking care of life’s details is good. Taking “extreme ownership” of everything in our domain is good. But what’s better is accepting what God has for you, even when, or especially when you have no idea what He’s doing.
To constantly fight for one’s own vision of how things should go, or how they should be, is an invitation to despair. TRUST ME ON THIS. There are certain practical/tactical things one can deploy if you’re depressed, but I think that acceptance of things, as goods for our salvation, is the bulk of it.
A notification just popped up from a Discord channel I barely check. It’s eerily pertinent to the point I’m stumbling toward. It’s a quote from St. Anthony the Great:
“Any circumstance in which a man finds himself unwillingly is a prison for him. So be content with whatever circumstances you may now be in, lest by being ungrateful you punish yourself unwittingly.”
Yup. You still have to act, to do, to “say the Jesus Prayer and handle it,” but if the resolutions you seek don’t materialize in the way you want on the timeline you forecast, don’t worry about it. There’s a reason for it, and you’re going to be better for it.
It took a lot of subtraction to uncover this bedrock truth, but now I see it clearly and walk joyfully upon it.
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FWIW, two things that have helped me with depression are 1) the realization that I am exactly where God wants me to be, especially when I just don’t get it, and 2) suffering, all suffering, is a gift from God Who allows nothing that is not for my eternal salvation.
God is infinitely good and all is grace. Oremus pro invicem.