The dark side of Easter

For many, Easter doesn’t have a dark side. But for me? Well, let’s just say that I was introduced to the dark side of Easter a mere 7 months after we planted The Gathering, the church which I founded and pastor.

And like most bad relationships, my meeting with the dark side took place online as I scrolled through my Twitter feed just a few hours after we’d turned out the lights and locked the door on our first Resurrection Sunday.

It started innocently enough. We had just set a new mark for record attendance (by 3!), and I had come home busting to tell someone – anyone – about it. I logged into my social media accounts, and before I could post anything, I started to see it: post after post from other churches about their Easter crowds. Stories of packed sanctuaries, running out of chairs, salvations and baptisms that numbered more than the total people we’d seen in 7 months at our church!

Suddenly, my post about having 138 people in a coffee shop that should have only held two-thirds of that didn’t seem quite so incredible.

What had been an amazing morning now seemed average, and when I should have been enjoying the light of the resurrection, I began to feel the familiar darkness of a place where I had spent many of my earlier years: the tomb of depression.

Growing up, I felt invisible and unnecessary. No matter how many times I was told the opposite, it didn’t change the feelings. I became convinced that I would never be good enough and as a result of that, I believed that I would never be able to do enough. Those 2 beliefs were powerful fuel on the fires of depression and anxiety, because they ensured that I never felt like I was truly accepted, and that was all it took to allow isolation to become my home.

Over time, I’ve come to understand that feelings are more indicators of where we are than identifiers of who we are, and I’ve also learned that I can celebrate what God is doing in me without exaggerating it so that I can compete with you. Comparison and competition are depression feeders for me, and a big step away from the dark side of Easter for me has been learning to be okay with what God has called ME to do.

I love the simplicity of Galatians 6:4:

Pay careful attention to your own work, for then you will get the satisfaction of a job well done, and you won’t need to compare yourself to anyone else.

Depression is, in many ways, the exact opposite of satisfaction. Depression is never satisfied, never convinced that what we’ve done is good enough or will ever even be enough, and it seems to always keep discontentment on a low boil. That’s what got me for so many years about Easter. I couldn’t celebrate what God was doing in other churches because I couldn’t celebrate what He was doing in mine (or in me!).

So, some tips for those of us pastors (or anyone else) who struggle with the dark side of Easter:

Stop comparing

It’s funny how quickly we fall for this one, but the comparison trap is real, and it’s the quickest way to fall back into the darkness. As the verse above says, we can only do what God has asked US to do. Faithfulness in that is what leads to contentment, and when we’re content in OUR calling, we’ll be more content in the success of another’s calling.

Stop exaggerating

There can be a temptation to inflate the numbers and the stories of Easter (as if the story of God dying for us and being raised victorious isn’t amazing all on its own!), and one of the best antidotes to depression is a real, authentic commitment to integrity, even if it means my story doesn’t seem as grand as yours. In fact, the quickest way to enjoy God’s favor is to be true in the secret place about the numbers. That’s a big deal to God, who made sure that Jesus talked multiple times in Matthew 6 about honoring him in the secret place more than being honored by men in a public one.

Start celebrating

It’s hard to enjoy the season you’re in when you’re comparing yourself to or competing with the season someone else is experiencing. The best way to fight that is often simply by celebrating the season you’re in and honoring the people who are in it with you!

Proverbs 12:25 tells us that anxiety weighs down the heart, but a kind word cheers it up. What I’ve learned over the last handfuls of Easters (and Mondays after Easter) is that the kind word works both ways: sure, HEARING a kind word can cheer us up, but SAYING a kind word  often does even more to lighten the heart and release anxiety!

So celebrate! I’m celebrating not only the highest Easter crowd we’ve ever had, but also a number of other churches that I’m honored to be in networks with who also had huge days! I’m reading over and over again the text thread that recounts numbers that our church may never attain and reminding myself that they are doing what God is asking of them, and that’s what I’m doing, too.

When it’s all said and done, faithfulness will always lead us to contentment where we are and away from resentment about where someone else is.

And faithfulness – by us or others – is something that God always celebrates. We should, too, and when we do, His light will break through the dark side of Easter.

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