It is Monday, and although it may come as a surprise to our non-pastor listeners, many

pastors will know that Mondays can be some of the darkest days of the week for them.

Steve, a pastor writes and asks this, Pastor John, how do you cope, battle, and overcome

post-Sermon depression?

Every Monday seems like a dark cloud of depression looming over my head.

Pastor John, what would you have to say to Steve?

I don't want to give the impression that there are simple and quick fixes for deep and complex

emotional conditions. I don't know what Steve is dealing with in any depth or complexity, but

we are deep people and we are complex people, and there probably are a hundred streams

feeding into the slew of despond, as John Bunyan calls it for Steve.

So I would be hesitant to make decisive pronouncements about all of his therapies.

It would be good for him to talk to somebody who knows him better, but having said that,

there are things that we share in common. I am one of those, right? I know what he's talking

about. I think I mentioned in one of the chapters in Desiring God that when I wrote that book when

I was approaching my 40s, and in those days, there were days of discouragement. So deep,

my mind could scarcely recall my children's names. I think I wrote that. So I have a little bit

of empathy at least with Steve's struggle. He doesn't tell me his age, by the way. I wish I knew,

but I didn't want to say there is something about midlife issues for men that's real, and the

turning point of 40, you know, those years on either side of 40, can be a crisis for men.

For reasons, I don't think we fully understand physically and psychologically. Certainly was for me.

So beware, all you men between 35 and 45, that you're in a season that you will get through,

and don't leave your wife and by sailboat or motorcycle and find another woman. It's a stupid way

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