If you are just reading this be sure to also read “Living with Emotions Part 1”, “Living with Emotions Part 2“ and “Living with Emotions Part 3“. As you know the first part was an overview, the second part was all about anger and the third part was on fear. This is the 4th installment and it’s on sadness. I have waited to near the end to for Sadness and Joy because throughout the movie “Inside Out, those were the two biggest emotions that were showcased.
I will first focus on the good side of sadness. Without this emotion, we can’t relate to many people because our world is full of sadness. We all have to have some form of sadness built into us because when we feel no pain then we can’t feel the other emotions either. Sadness is very important because if we hold all sadness in and just pretend we are happy all the time then the day will come when that sadness turns into anger and anger into bitterness.
You see in the movie, Joy learned that sadness is important as she saw sadness go over and hug someone and changed how they feel. Joy was stunned about how she did that because she was able to take her sadness and share with him and he felt better. That is one reason why sadness can be a good thing. It helps us see situations where we can serve, and if we didn’t feel any sadness in our hearts, we wouldn’t serve people on the level that God wants us to.
I think a healthy form of sadness helps us stay emotionally stable. When someone passes on in your life, you have to feel sadness because if you push that away like I did back in 2003, you then turn to everything you can in order to cover the sadness up. I already had addictions that controlled my life before that, but my mom’s death pushed me over the edge.
I went from using credit to travel all over the east coast because I was running from the sadness. When I ran out of credit I went back to heavy drinking and popping pills and that led to other things until I finally surrendered it all to God on Dec. 26, 2007. All of this happened because I held my sadness in. You have to allow yourself to cry from time to time. You have to allow yourself some time to be sad. You have to dig deep into your heart and feel sadness so you can let it all out. Because if you hold even an ounce in, it will creep into every area of life.
That is the bad side of sadness as it will turn into anger and then into bitterness. Once you reach bitterness, you will see the world in a very different light. You will see only darkness because your heart has become bitter and hardened.
In the movie, Sadness felt like she was always wrong. She felt like there was no place for sadness. She felt like everything that turned bad was her fault because all she knew was sadness. Just like in real life, if sadness controls everything in your life then you will be the same way. It will paralyze you from doing anything. Sadness will cause you to not want to do anything. Research even shows that people who are sad all of the time actually have a greater chance to get sick because your mind shuts down your organs and makes your body not function the way it is supposed to. People don’t realize how powerfully God created our minds, but they are very powerful.
Are you ready for a healthy kind of sadness? Are you ready to stop the abundance of sadness? There needs to be a healthy balance and God is the answer to that. You can’t have life without sadness and you can’t have sadness control you either.
Ask God to help you discern the healthy kind of sadness from the sadness that leads you nowhere. Ask him to protect your heart from anger by allowing you to feel sadness that you already have so you can heal. Ask him to heal your heart because an unhealed heart leads to bitterness. Ask him to give you the strength to feel sadness and let go of what you need to let go! AMEN!
Living a God-Inspired Life,
Chris Benton
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