I awoke to the pitter patter of rain drops rather than the anticipated sound of chirping birds. My eyes adjusted to another dark, drizzly Monday. Rainy days and Mondays always get me down. I don’t generally like the first day of the week. It means the weekend is over. Time of rest and relaxation has come to an end. Back to a new week of work and toil. The Monday Blues take over as I get ready for my day.


The Monday’s of this past year have been especially hard after the tragic loss of my first born son. Grief is such a strange thing. You never know when it’s going to creep in and take over your emotions.
 This Monday was no different. I did my best not to show my sadness, but my husband can always see the pain in my eyes. Sitting in silence for most of the morning was commonplace; I don’t talk much when I’m blue. On my way out the door to start my Blue Monday, Mike stated: “It’s Monday. Make it a great day.” 
To which I responded, “I have the Monday Blues.” 
He looked at me, his eyes peering over the brim of his glasses, and said: “Pick a different color.”


Pick. A. Different. Color. 

So simple and yet so profound. 
I meditated on this statement all morning. Can it really be that simple? 
Thinking about bright yellows and brilliant oranges got my mind off my blues. I spent the 30 minute drive to work pondering the endless color choices in order to replace this blue Monday with a brighter shade. My Monday commute normally involves wiping hot tears from my cheeks. But this Monday was different, as I thought about colors, I could be clever with my choice, and Mauve came to mind. Mauve Monday. But I’m not a big Mauve fan; that hue of pink just didn’t seem to fit my personality. This was a very serious decision, one with which I had to be extremely careful. I needed to pick just the right color to take over my Monday Blues.


During lunch, I Googled the meanings of colors, and I found a color wheel with hundreds of different colors and their corresponding traits. I quickly passed over purple, but did a double take when glancing over the attributes. Purple.

Purple Monday. 

Purple is a product of blue combined with red; a tiny change in one creates something new. Attributes of the color purple are creativity, wealth, peace, wisdom, and my favorite: royalty. Okay…I like where this is going. Upon further investigation, I found lighter shades of purple are often used to soothe or calm the spirit. Yes…purple is my new Monday color.

I’m positive my husband did not intend for me to go this deep, but it seems that’s what I do these days. I go deep. His statement was so serious I felt a huge responsibility to give it weighty thought.


What exactly is my point, you ask?
 If you don’t like the way something is going, you DO have the choice to change it. You DO NOT have to settle in on sadness when it truly destroys your whole day. It all comes down to choice. 

Now, I know what you’re thinking. We cannot always control our emotions like that…they cannot be turned on and off like a faucet. That is true. What I am saying is, consider making a choice to do something else. Make a tiny change. It won’t always work, but you have to try. Staying stuck in the same place, doing the same thing over and over again is bondage. Mike’s simple statement made me realize I was bound to my sadness every Monday morning. But the idea of changing the way we look at our situations give us small victory after small victory, and pretty soon, we will wake up to a peaceful Purple Monday rather than the blue Monday we’ve grown so accustomed.

So go ahead and give yourself permission to choose a different color.

It is going to take some time to get used to this new heart response, but I can tell you that for today, this Monday was not filled with the blues.

And I came home to witness a momma deer give birth to her brand new baby fawn in the field beyond our fence. A truly miraculous experience and a perfect end to my Purple Monday.


Peace