Five Weeks And Everything Feels Heavier

You put the kitchen light on at two o'clock this afternoon.

You have put it on at about two every day for a month. It is not dark exactly. It is that particular flat gray that is neither one thing nor the other, where the room is technically lit and you cannot read comfortably, and after a while you get up and put the light on without deciding to.

That has been the shape of five weeks.

There has been no weather in it. Not a storm, not a spell of anything you could describe. Just a sky the same color every day, from the second week of October, unbroken.

And everything has gotten heavier.

Not dramatically. It is more that things which cost you nothing in July have started to cost something. Getting out of the chair. Answering the message from Thursday. The bit of the day between four and six, which used to be nothing and is now a stretch you get through.

And the strangest part is that you are not sad about anything. There is no grief here, and nothing has gone wrong. If somebody asked you what was the matter you would not have an answer.

So you have started to wonder what is wrong with you.

That is why this article exists, and I am going to be careful with it.

I am not going to name a condition. Not one. I am not a doctor and I have never met you, and a stranger on the internet attaching a label to how you feel in November is doing something reckless.

And I am not going to suggest a treatment. No routine, no supplement, no lamp, no regimen. If somebody has sold you one, that is between you and them.

If any of this is more than the weather, and only you can know that, this site has a page that points somewhere better, and I would rather you use it than take an article as an answer.

What I have is one true observation about weather, and one small thing to do in it.

My tears have been my meat day and night

There is a psalm written by somebody in a long low stretch, and its honesty is the useful part.

My tears have been my meat day and night, while they continually say unto me, Where is thy God? (Psalm 42:3, King James Version)

My tears have been my meat day and night.

Notice the duration first. Day and night, which is not a bad afternoon. This is a state that has gone on and become the ordinary condition of a person, and it is described that way without apology.

And meat means food. He is saying that tears have been what he lives on, which is a strange and exact way to describe a long stretch where the heaviness is simply the substance of your days.

And then the second half, which is the part I want you to have.

While they continually say unto me, Where is thy God.

He is being asked a question, over and over, and the question is about his faith. Whatever is happening to him has been read by somebody as evidence about his relationship with God, and the asking is continual.

He does not answer it. He does not defend himself, does not explain, and does not produce a reason. He records that the question is being asked and moves on, and later in the same psalm he speaks to his own soul rather than to them.

You have been asking yourself that question for two weeks. Not in those words. More like: what is wrong with me, or: why can I not just get on with things, or a quiet suspicion that a person in better spiritual shape would not be this flattened by a gray sky.

That question is in scripture as something said to a struggling man by other people, and it is not treated as a fair question, and he is not required to answer it.

You are not required to answer the question you have been asking yourself, and a long low stretch has never once been treated as evidence about your faith. Psalm 42:3 records the continual asking without ever answering it, and the Holy Spirit is the one present with somebody putting a light on at two in the afternoon.

Weather does this to people

Here is the practical half, and it is one plain fact.

Light is a physical input and you have had five weeks less of it than you had in July.

That is not a metaphor. Bodies respond to light, and yours is running on considerably less of it than it was two months ago, and it is doing what a body does with that.

This is not a personality difference between you and somebody more cheerful. It is not a spiritual condition. It is not a failure of gratitude or a lack of discipline. It is a physical circumstance acting on a physical thing, and every farmer, sailor and northern grandmother in history has known that weather works on people, without needing a name for it.

And here is the part that has done you the most damage in five weeks: because nothing has happened, you have concluded that the heaviness must be coming from inside you.

That is the wrong conclusion and it is an expensive one. It turns an external circumstance into a fault, and once a thing is a fault, you have to fix it or be guilty, and you have been quietly guilty since about the third week.

The gray is doing something to you. That is a sentence about the sky and about a body, and it is not an accusation about a soul.

And it is worth saying plainly: you are not being weak about this. You are five weeks into a genuinely diminished condition and you have been going to work, feeding people and answering messages the whole time, at a higher cost per task than any of it took in July, and nobody has noticed because you have not let it show.

The weather is doing this to you rather than something inside you doing it, and feeling it has never once been weakness. The written word records a long low stretch without one word of diagnosis, and the Spirit of God is the one who is with somebody who has been quietly guilty since the third week.

Ten minutes in it, as it is

So here is the assignment, and the important word is in it.

Go outside for ten minutes in the gray without waiting for it to improve.

Today, and it is gray today, and that is the point.

Coat on, out the door, ten minutes. Round the block, up the road and back, into the yard and stand there. It does not matter where.

Now here is what I want to head off, because it is the reason you have not been out since the weekend.

You have been waiting for a decent day. Somewhere in the last month you started saving going outside for when it is nicer, and there has not been a nicer day since the second week of October, so you have effectively stopped going out and you did not notice yourself deciding to.

That waiting is the thing this assignment ends. Not by making today pleasant. Today is not going to be pleasant and I am not going to pretend otherwise.

But even a gray sky is many times brighter than that kitchen with the light on, and your body knows the difference even when your eyes do not report anything remarkable. Ten minutes under an overcast sky is not the same as ten minutes in a room.

And I am not promising it lifts anything. It might do nothing that you can feel. Do it anyway, and do not check afterward whether it worked, because checking turns it into a treatment and I said this is not one.

Ten minutes. In the gray. As it is.

You are able to go out into it as it is, and the day has never once had to improve first. Psalm 42:3 sets the long stretch down as it stands with no remedy attached, and the Holy Spirit is the one present with somebody standing outside in a coat under a flat sky.