Dear God, I think Inside Out from Pixar/Disney was one of the most brilliant movies about psychology that I’ve ever seen. The clip above is the spoiler for the movie. In fact, if anyone is reading this and has not seen the movie, I would strongly encourage them to stop reading and watch the entire movie right now. It’s brilliant (I think I said that already) and you have to take the whole journey to appreciate the clip I found above. With that said, there are spoilers ahead.

So the big reveal at the end of the movie is that “Joy” ends up being the unwitting villain of the movie. The main emotions for the pre-pubescent child are Joy, Disgust, Anger, and Sadness. For 95% of the movie, Sadness is seen as the problem. Sadness is apparently making things worse. But by the end the conclusion is that, sometimes, sadness, is the exact emotion we need to move through something in a healthy way. By trying to squelch sadness you end up taking away a key aspect of each one of us.

I think it’s a fascinating thing for our society right now. Take politics for example. I think a lot of people are sad about how the last election in 2020 turned out, just like a different group of people were sad about how the 2016 election turned out. However, instead of letting sadness have its moment, most people went straight to anger, and that anger is fueled by a media that makes its money off of anger. Sadness doesn’t drive ratings. Anger does.

And sometimes we find ourselves responding to personal situations by trying to deny sadness and will ourselves to joy or substitute anger. I’ve certainly done that. I think a lot of people do it. Anger seems to be the big one. If I’ve been wronged, anger because the default emotion instead of sadness.

Father, help me to embrace sadness more. Help me to support others in sadness as well. I have a friend whose husband recently got a terrible medical diagnosis. Help me to learn from Job’s friends and just sit with them in sadness for a while. Help us to learn to mourn. Help us to take that mourning to you and turn it into faith and worship. I certainly have things in my life right now that have made me incredibly sad while also being laced with anger. And there can be a place for anger–don’t get me wrong. I just don’t want to lose my sadness and miss the opportunity for sadness to push me in the direction you need me to go.

In Jesus’s name I pray,

Amen