Grey Space

It’s been a while since I wrote a blog post. Honestly, my life has been very busy with a mixed bag of things; some really wonderful and some really difficult. In the past month, I have rejoiced and wept, I have laughed and grieved. I have seen doors closing and others opening. I have made it through some hardships that had been going on for a long time and I have seen new hardships emerging. I am so excited about a lot of things that God is doing and at the same time, I struggle with areas I wish God would create breakthrough in. All that to say, I’m on a bit of a roller-coaster at the moment.

I know I can’t be the only one that has felt this way or is currently feeling this way. I can’t be the only one that is learning how to praise God for His goodness and faithfulness while also facing the realities in my life that could challenge me to question God. I know there are more people out there who might just feel a little bit crazy because so many conflicting feelings and attitudes are happening inside them all at once. I’m not sure if all that makes sense, or if anyone else will resonate with me on this, but that is truly where I am at.

I’d like to talk about toxic extremes. I think sometimes we believe that life can only go well or horrible, like everything sucks or everything is great. But that’s not really how life works, is it? Life is complex and contradictory. You’re allowed to work through hard things and still have joy in the process. One thing I often struggle with is this “black and white” mentality where there are two extremes and those are the only possibilities. When in reality, our lives often fall in the grey space, the in-between, or even a mixture of both good and bad.

What if we let ourselves accept that we can experience the joy, hope, and blessing of Christ while also experiencing the pain, brokenness, and destruction of sin? I think it would create a lot of freedom in our lives. If we can give ourselves and those around us permission to live in grey space, I think we wouldn’t get so stuck in toxic extremes.

Of course, as Christians we are supposed to walk in truth, walk in the Spirit, and walk in the light. This grey space I am referring to simply means allowing ourselves to have complex lives with good and bad things going on all at once. It means allowing ourselves to praise God even during hard times and allowing ourselves to face hard emotions and questions even during the good times.

There is a toxic mentality where we feel stuck in sin, whether it is our own sin, the sins of those around us, or just the brokenness of our world in general. We sink into depression, anxiety, comparison, anger, judgment, apathy, our own sinful habits, whatever it may be, and we won’t let ourselves get out. Maybe you feel like you can’t rejoice in the Lord’s goodness, in Jesus’ sacrifice, or in the blessings God is giving you because right now you’re dealing with an overwhelming struggle that you feel needs your full attention.

Another toxic mentality we get stuck in is the opposite of the last. We are seeing the goodness of God firsthand, we are blessed in obvious ways by the Lord’s hand, and even though there are extremely difficult things going on around us, we don’t deal with them because we don’t want to let go of our joy and focus on Christ. Maybe you think that facing your trauma, your issues, your sin, and the brokenness in your life just can’t happen as you praise the Lord and experience His blessing. You feel like you need to just stay positive and focus on the good things and not address the bad things.

Both of these mindsets are unhealthy. God reveals Himself to us in the good and the bad and we are meant to focus on Him and seek Him no matter what, but we are also supposed to face reality and walk in truth. Sometimes that means trudging through really hard things, things that make it much more difficult to worship the Lord and rejoice in His character. But these things are meant to build up our faith and increase our trust in the Lord, and we can still rejoice in the Lord even during those times.

What if you allowed the light to start breaking through your darkness? What if you could praise God and feel joy in your heart even as you deal with your sin and brokenness? What if you started stepping toward the grey space instead of staying only in the extremes?

Following God should push us to be well-balanced and healthy individuals. This means doing hard things and experiencing emotions and hurt, but it also means knowing that we always have hope and joy and freedom even in that. It means we don’t get stuck in toxic negativity and sadness, but we also don’t get stuck in toxic positivity and denial of brokenness. This is the space I find myself in right now.

When people ask me how I am, I am tempted to answer dishonestly or not answer at all. If I say I am doing well does that discount the hard things going on in my life? If I say I am not doing well does that discount the blessings and joy in my life? I know a woman who always has the same answer when asked how she is doing. “I am blessed.” What a beautiful response.

No matter the good or the bad going on in our lives, we are blessed. Whether we are happy or sad, angry or calm, confused or at peace; we are blessed. To me, that perfectly sums up the grey space I want to live in. A space where there is room to work through trauma, experience anger, struggle through depression and anxiety, and fight against sin while I also count my blessings, give praise to God, focus on the purpose and mission He has given me, and feel thankful for His grace in my life.

I am not saying I want to go through hard things and deal with brokenness, because I definitely don’t. What I am saying is that we should give ourselves room to face whatever life throws at us when it comes and we shouldn’t expect ourselves to function without pain and struggle in a world marred by sin. We can fully know and believe in the truth of the gospel while also still struggling with life.

(THIS IS THE GOSPEL: The truth that we as humans are all sinners who need a Savior because we can’t earn forgiveness or redemption on our own. So, God sent His only son, Jesus, to earth as a helpless baby and Jesus lived a sinless life, died for our sake, and bore the wrath of God that we deserved. He defeated death and sin when He rose on the third day so that we could be reconciled to God, forgiven of our sins, and receive eternal life).

I think that sometimes in Christian culture the “toxic positivity” extreme is preached. We think we are less holy when we grieve or hurt or get angry, or we judge others who seem to be struggling and hurting. We lose sight of the fact that Jesus was fully human while He lived on earth, that He too experienced grief, pain, and even anger. Yet Jesus never sinned, and He was always faithful to God and trusted His Father.

The other extreme, “toxic negativity,” is more popularly embraced in secular culture. The idea is that you are allowed to not just feel emotions and go through struggles, but you can even take them on as an identity. That depression or anxiety is a personality trait, or your anger is just part of who you are. Our culture would even have us embrace our sin, disguising it as “self-love” and “acceptance.” But we are not meant to embrace our sin or our trauma as a part of who we are, we are given a new identity in Christ.

So this “grey space” I am talking about, doesn’t function outside of walking in the light and following the Word of God as Christians, it’s simply referring to not feeling like we have to be one-dimensional people who only have good days or bad days. It means that we can wake up thanking the Lord for His new mercies and on that same day, even in the next moment, we may also experience sadness over a loss or a disappointment we are going through. Going through hurt or disappointment, or whatever it may be, does not discount our ability to be faithful to the Lord and to fully trust Him.

This is a concept I am trying to preach to myself recently and I hope it is coming across clearly. Do you ever feel like you are living in an extreme? Maybe you feel guilty if you start to deal with pain or trauma or disappointment in your life. Maybe you feel like you can’t even let go of your pain, trauma, or disappointment for a moment because it’s been so long since you acknowledged the good in life. Whichever circumstance you relate to, the positivity extreme or the negativity extreme, I would encourage you to seek balance in your life. Seek to walk away from the extreme and inch toward the middle, the grey space.

This doesn’t mean you let go of your joy in the Lord, your thankfulness for His faithfulness, or that you take your eyes off of Him. You should still stand firm in your beliefs and walk in the plans the Lord has for you. You should still glorify the Lord and worship Him with your obedience and gladness.

It also doesn’t mean you can’t have hard moments or days where you struggle more with having to address sin or past hurt, or that you can’t keep working through trauma. You will probably experience sadness, anger, hurt, or confusion at times. You will probably have times where you will lament and cry out to the Lord in your pain.

The point is this, give yourself permission to acknowledge the amazing grace of God while also acknowledging the horrible brokenness in our world. Give yourself permission to be a complex individual with complex emotions and experiences, good and bad all intertwined into one story. You are allowed to cry and laugh within moments of each other. In the same prayer, you are allowed to praise the Lord for breakthrough and express the disappointment you feel in a different area of your life. You can and will experience blessing and pain all on the same day.

One day, we will live in an extreme that is not attainable right now. We will be with the Lord and everything will be made right. There will be no more pain or suffering or tears. One day, this “grey space” that exists on earth will be gone forever. I can’t even wait for that day, but it’s not here yet.

I know that this post may seem confusing in some ways, I am a bit confused myself. As I said before, life is complex and we as individuals are complex. I hope that someone could relate to this feeling I am having and that this post was helpful to you. I am trying to learn how to practice all of this myself and I am inviting you into this journey with me.

I hope and pray that we can learn to embrace whatever is thrown at us, whether that means gathering with people to praise the Lord for His character or gathering with people to mourn a loss and seek support. I hope we will allow ourselves to see clearly the good and the bad in our lives and we will address those things accordingly. I pray that we will never lose sight of God and His amazing grace and that we will also allow ourselves to work through and process the hard things going on in our lives. I hope that we can learn to respond to the question, “how are you?” with a simple, “I am blessed.” Thanks for showing up,

-Elena ❤