Psalm 38:9
“All my longings lie open before you, Lord; my sighing is not hidden from you.”
As someone who suffers from dysthymia, or persistent depressive disorder, I am quite familiar with the word “mundane.” When experiencing a major depressive episode, nearly all of my days are “mundane.” Some days are full of heavy debilitating tiredness, where I can’t leave my bed. Some days are full of tears for no good reason, other than the fact that sometimes, I simply feel too much. But most days are just mundane, where I don’t feel anything at all. Each day is just another rotation of the Earth, another eight hours of work, and another meaningless routine of the same tedious tasks. And instead of taking advantage of the rotation of the Earth, the eight hours of work, and the routine tasks and activities, the most appealing thing sounds like staring at the ceiling until it’s time to go to bed again.
I think that’s the true definition of mundane. However, I can’t help but wonder why. Why the lack of feeling? Why the lack of interest?
As we’ve talked about in recent weeks, it’s okay to question God. I know personally, I often ask God why I feel too much, and other times, why I feel nothing at all. When I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, I question why He seems to have removed all feeling from my body, why my days are mundane, why life is tedious and dull and monotonous. Through my questioning, I have learned something rather important: God has gifted us with the ability to feel.
From the time we are children, we are taught that we experience different emotions: happiness, sadness, anger, frustration, grief, jealousy, etc. The flow between each emotion seems almost natural the older we grow, and we stop wondering why water flows from our eyes when sad and why the blood travels to our face when angry. When we don’t feel a smile on our cheeks, a tug on our heart, or stress in our stomach, we are recognizing the absence of the gifts God has given us.
How beautiful it is to feel things, good or bad. How beautiful it is to feel love when your family hugs you, to feel joy when a puppy licks your face, to feel appreciated when someone gives you a gift. God gave you those feelings. God also gave us the ability to recognize those positive emotions by giving us the sadness we feel when someone passes, the anger when someone betrays us, and stress we feel when overwhelmed. Without negative emotions, we can’t recognize positive emotions, and without the mundane, we can’t recognize the gift God has given us to feel. If you are living in the mundane, shift your thinking. Rather than seeing the lack of feeling as a loss, remind yourself that it is a gift.