The Monday Blues
If something inside of you is real, we will probably find it interesting, and it will probably be universal. So you must risk placing real emotion at the center of your work. Write straight into the emotional center of things. Write toward vulnerability. Risk being unliked. Tell the truth as you understand it.
– Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird
After I preach, I go through what I’ve come to call the “ughs.” I don’t feel relief, or satisfaction, or that good at all. I just feel—ugh. It doesn’t matter how well or not it went. It doesn’t matter if everyone laughed at the jokes or the room was stone silent. It doesn’t matter if I’m inundated with positive feedback or none at all. Generally, I feel good about my content, and with the reps, I’m now comfortable in the delivery. Generally, I know I’ve been faithful to God, and can trust him to work or not through whatever I’ve offered.
None of it changes the ughs. You know the dream where you show up naked? The ughs feel like a very mild version of that. You know you’ve just put yourself out there, you’ve just been vulnerable in a necessarily unilateral way—and then you’re just left afterwards. You wonder what the people who don’t give you feedback are really thinking about it. You replay everything you said and wonder if any of it was any good. Maybe you should have worn a different outfit or hairstyle. And if you were recorded—you’re either tempted to obsessively check it out, or you feel repulsed at the thought of viewing it.
It's difficult to talk about the ughs, because it makes you sound like you’re fishing for compliments, or are deeply insecure, when neither is true. You’re just processing the aftereffects of public vulnerability.
Apparently this is not an uncommon phenomenon. It goes by many names: post-event blues, post-project depression, post-presentation syndrome. Pastors call it the Monday blues. Some version of it can happen after any major project, presentation, or task, simply because the adrenaline has left, leaving an anticlimactic feeling in its wake. But I think the Monday blues are more than that. Giving a sermon involves speaking on spiritual things that are by nature much more personal than anything shared in a class lecture or business presentation, and the change you hope to effect is by nature unquantifiable and unpredictable. The degree of vulnerability, coupled with the lack of immediate or measurable outcome, leaves you suspended in a strange place. It’s easy to become discouraged or unsettled.
So what does one do about the Monday blues? Here, as a reminder for myself, are four things to try:
See it as both temporary, and normal. Remember that the feeling usually passes after a day or two. Most of all, accept it. This is part of the process. Other people feel this way too. It doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you or with the way you preached this time.
Do something fun. Usually the best first thing to do is to eat a good meal, then go for a walk or run. Often you haven’t eaten well that morning, or maybe even slept well last night—so this is a good prompt to recover, relax, and reward. Knit, read a novel, water the plants, hug a kid. Do something that destresses and feels good.
Connect with someone. Find the people who know you intimately and love you unconditionally and process with them a bit. Find people who can hold you gently and listen, but who can also give you honest feedback. This is actually not a bad time to consider things you could improve, while the experience is fresh in your mind, but remember also to take to heart the things you did well.
Pray and release it. This has to happen. If you only spend the day doing fun things, it’s just going to distract you until all the doubts and replays come back to haunt you at night. Take the ughs as a prompt to pray and release: thank God for the chance to preach, confess and ask forgiveness for anything that’s bothering you, and then release the results to him. This is ultimately a good reminder that it is not up to you and your powers of preaching—it’s up to God.
Remember the advice Dean gave you that time you told him about the sermon you were struggling to write:
If I can offer one more word from a journeyman preacher—sometimes you present an amazing meal from soup to nuts and sometimes it’s just meat and potatoes. Both are nourishing and provide a measure of energy for life. While I think we should give everything we’ve got to presenting God’s word, I’ve come to accept that I will be better at times than others. I’m just putting it out there the best I can. I’ve also discovered that often it’s the message that seems meh that connects with a person in a way I never imagined. The Holy Spirit is sovereign in these things.
