4 ways to be free from self-pity
She came up after the prayer meeting several months ago and said quietly, “It’s self-pity.”
Ah. Yes. I hadn’t thought of that term in ages, but that was it. We had been praying over a situation, and sort of at a loss for what to pray against. Something was unclear. And that was it. A subtle sin we rarely recognize, self-pity masquerades in other acceptable forms, making it difficult to rid ourselves of its poisonous influence in our lives.
After she brought it up, it was uncanny how often it came up. I could see it so clearly, hidden beneath a thin veil of discouragement, or righteous indignation, or social withdrawal. In my very next conversation with a friend, she confessed that she struggled with … self-pity. The next conversation meandered eventually to … self-pity. It was everywhere, and most of all in me.
After identifying it, I immediately pulled a book off the shelf I hadn’t read in almost 13 years. But I still remember the quote, so vividly, by John Piper:
Consider the relationship between boasting and self-pity. Both are manifestations of pride. Boasting is the response of pride to success. Self-pity is the response of pride to suffering. Boasting says, “I deserve admiration because I have achieved so much.” Self-pity says, “I deserve admiration because I have sacrificed so much.” Boasting is the voice of price in the heart of the strong. Self-pity is the voice of pride in the heart of the weak. Boasting sounds self-sufficient. Self-pity sounds self-sacrificing.
The reason self-pity does not look like pride is that it appears to be needy.
But the need arises from a wounded ego and the desire of the self-pitying is not really for others to see them as helpless, but heroes. The need self-pity feels does not come from a self of unworthiness, but from a sense of unrecognized worthiness. It is the response of un-applauded pride.
Battling Unbelief, p. 51
Ouch. I wish I could make this less convicting, but I can’t. It’s so true. As I reflected on these words for the following months, I began to see my own subtle self-pity-parties happening with alarming frequency. Often hard to see from the outside, it often takes the form of quiet sighs, negative self-talk, mentally nursing perceived injustices, refusing to make our wishes known because “it doesn’t matter what I want.”
It’s poison for your mind and heart, and especially dangerous for moms. In fact, I think self-pity it might be the occupational hazard of motherhood. And honestly, we can’t afford to take it lightly. Jon Bloom writes,
Self-pity is a dangerous, deceitful, heart-hardening sin (Hebrews 3:13). It’s a spiritual deadener, choking faith, draining hope, killing joy, smothering love, fueling anger, and robbing any desire to serve others. And it is a feeder-sin, encouraging us to comfort our poor selves with all manner of sinful indulgence like gossip, slander, gluttony, substance abuse, pornography, and binge entertainment, just to name a few. Self-pity poisons our relationships and is often an underlying cause of our “burnout.”
DesiringGod.org.
Mamas … I say this with all love: Maybe we don’t need more self-care. Maybe we need to fight for freedom from the prison of self-pity.
How? Of course there’s no magic. But I’ve found this to help:
- Name it and ditch it. In my book (link) we talk about the importance of calling it what it is so that we can be free of it. As long as we say, “I’m just struggling with the hardships and injustices done to me,” we won’t be free. If we call it what it is–my wounded pride–we can be FREE. We can confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sin and cleanse us of all unrighteousness.
- Declare war on it. Resolve immediately, unhesitatingly, and without remorse to absolutely destroy any trace of self-pity you identify in yourself, daily. Ask a trusted friend to help you identify subtle ways it might play out. Think through your day and determine when you are most likely to slip into these patterns. Be on guard and show no mercy.
- Give thanks. You cannot be grateful and sulking at the same time. A consistent habit of giving thanks, daily, will do wonders for working the self-pity out of our hearts. It’ll kill those self-pity weeds before they even crop up.
- Focus outward. Knowing that self-pity is a pride-related sin is enormously helpful, because then we can rest assured that a pursuit of humility will deal it a death-blow. How do we pursue humility? By pursuing the interest of others (Phil 2). When we get busy finding joy outside ourselves, there just isn’t time to nurse internal wounds.
How about you? How do you overcome the subtle sin of self-pity? I’d love to hear the insights God’s given you. Thanks for reading.
My experience with Unplanned: Why I struggled, why I went, what I saw.
You know you’re going to an unusual movie when you’re sitting in a fairly full theater and not a single person has food. No munching on popcorn, no slurping sodas. My own cupholder held kleenex. I’d been forewarned that I’d need them.
Last night, my friends and I went to see Unplanned. I wanted to briefly share my experience with you.
I struggled with the decision on whether or not to go. I am pro-life. Some of my earliest memories are of sitting in the lobby of our local Pregnancy Resource Center (then called Crisis Pregnancy Center) putting stickers on notebook pages, looking at the brochures with pictures of tiny, perfectly formed babies on the front. My mom’s coat lapel always had her tiny-feet pin attached. At all times the reminder of this oft-forgotten segment of life. I have wonderful memories of my mom’s involvement–her gentle, kind, caring ways as she interacted with women in crisis.
So why was I hesitant to see the movie? Only because I wasn’t sure the spirit in which it’d be presented. I’ve become convinced that God’s kingdom isn’t accomplished through anger. The Kingdom doesn’t come through arguments on Facebook, and I want to avoid anything that incites anger in me toward others. I know where I stand on this issue, so I didn’t necessarily need a movie to convince me of something I already knew.
But. I also know that my own heart drifts into indifference with alarming frequency. I need to consistently put in front of my face the reality of this world and ask God to please, again, break my heart for the things that break His. I could honestly see both sides–so I wasn’t sure.
I prayed over it for a couple days, then when I really needed to make a decision I went for a prayer walk and asked God. I’m not saying, “Thus saith the Lord,” but what came to mind was Harriet Beecher Stowe and Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
As you probably know, Stowe was a faithful follower of Jesus. Her heart was broken over the reality of slavery and the horrific mistreatment of African-Americans in America in the mid 1800s. She was a writer, a novelist, so she figured the way she could help was by writing a story–a novel that told the truth about the situation at hand.
Little did she know that her little book would change the course of history. In just the first three months after publication it sold 300,000 copies (that’d be like 3 million today!). They couldn’t print copies fast enough.
Abraham Lincoln famously said to her, speaking of the Civil War,
“So you’re the little lady who made this big war.”
I read Uncle Tom’s Cabin several years ago and it completely wrecked me. There were times I felt so convicted I had to put the book down and wait a few days to continue. It made me squirm, weep, repent, and pray. It inspired me and gave me a glimpse into the reality of the slavery-era like nothing I’d read before.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin was so effective because it re-humanized a population that had been dehumanized. That can’t be done by facts and figures, or by arguments over Bible verses. It took art, it took the telling of a story, to radically re-paint African-Americans as what they actually are–precious people made in the image of God. And, it promoted HOPE, forgiveness, the gospel of Jesus Christ, of sacrificial love.
Stowe also shows masterful brilliance in portraying the complexities at work. The lines between good and bad are squiggly and often blurry. She refused to paint all slave-holders as evil and all abolitionists as saints. She lets her readers sit with a great deal of ambiguity and discomfort and conviction. I cannot recommend this novel highly enough.
So this came to mind when I considered seeing Unplanned.
Plus, I read scores of reviews that convinced me the move was done in a spirit of love and humility, with a spirit of redemption and HOPE. Hope is the key word. I could get behind that.
I’m SO GLAD WE WENT. I cannot recommend it highly enough. I will say, I wouldn’t take my kids. Not because of anything inappropriate, but simply because it’s true and the level of intensity is beyond anything I’ve experienced in a movie theater.
I’d simply say: Please go. See for yourself. Yes, it is hard to watch, but it re–humanizes a segment of our population that’s been dehumanized. It helps us understand the real struggle, it fills us with COMPASSION for those women who are faced with this heart-wrenching decision. It condemns the violence and hatred that have surrounded some pro-life movements. It exalts redemption, hope, forgiveness, love. It will re-inspire you to PRAY.
Hopefully I’ll have a chance to share more reflections on the movie, but for now, I invite you to go. It’s only showing now through Thursday night. Thanks so much for considering.
Give your kids a hunger to learn more…
It was the conversation I never dreamed we’d have:
“I don’t think we’re doing enough. School has gotten really easy.”
“Yeah, you said we’d be doing more this year, but we aren’t. Can’t we learn some more things?”
It was the kind of complaining that’s music to a mama’s ears. Both kids lamenting that they’re not learning enough? Both kids actually asking to do more school?
After I picked myself up off the floor, I asked some clarifying questions, to understand what exactly they were wanting. At twelve and ten-years-old, they are mostly independent in their studies, and over the past couple years I’ve slowly decluttered our curriculum, simmering it down to the basic essentials.
I saw so much good coming from having more space, I was hesitant to add anything back in.
But now they were begging me for more. Wasn’t this exactly what I’d hoped for? Wasn’t this the whole point? Don’t they say that cultivating (or recovering) a love of learning was the whole point of these middle-years?
This was it. My confirmation that a love of learning was growing, and that now, now that they were asking for it, I could effectively add more work into their days.
I sat down with paper and asked them each in turn:
Ok, you’re already doing the basics, so what subjects would you like to add? What do you want to learn?
Schadenfreude
“Accept people.”
That was the last of 4 specific “marching orders” that God seemed to be giving me for the month of January. As I mentioned before, a couple dozen ladies from my church family rallied together to do a group fast, each of us abstaining from or focusing on certain things. I didn’t fast food, but instead felt called to focus my attention on issues of the heart the Father was addressing.
To be honest, I was a bit flummoxed by this “accept people” directive. The others were obvious things—get up early and pray, that sort of thing. What do you mean Accept people? Don’t I already accept people? Who don’t I accept? What does that even mean? Well, I figured even if I didn’t understand it I better say Yes, Sir! and start marching and He’d show me more in time.
And He did. Shortly after the fast began, I was reading through the Sermon on the Mount and was struck afresh by,
Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you.
Matthew 7:1-2
It goes on to talk about specks, logs, we are mostly familiar with that part. But then right after, in the same breath, Jesus says,
Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you.
v. 6
And then:
Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits…
v.15-16
Ok, wow. That sounds a whole lot like judging. I mean, How do I discern who is a dog unless I make a judgment? How do I figure out who false prophets are unless I do some evaluation of fruit? All that discerning evaluating sure sounds a lot like judging.
Right? But here’s the thing:
Discerning Heart vs. Critical Spirit
As I prayed through this what surfaced was that the bottom line is attitude. A critical spirit is an attitude that is eager to find fault. It is not so interested helping other people flourish but in being right. It kind of feels good to find fault. There’s a little tinge of pleasure when someone “shows their true colors” and messes up.
This can be so subtle. When someone makes a poor choice, for instance, and I know deep down it’s a poor choice, then when that choice bears bad fruit there can be a subtle (inward, secret, silent!) “See, I told you so!” in my heart, which is that critical spirit. No one has to see it in order for it to be sin.
“Love does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth.”
1 Corinthians 13:6
We should never feel a tinge of self-satisfying smug “rejoicing” when someone does wrong, or when something surfaces. Even if we “saw it coming,” if there is any part of us that “rejoices at wrongdoing” then we are have not love, we have a critical spirit (and, most likely, a huge log hanging out of our eye!).
So I sat with God and my journal and asked God to show me some ways that this crops up in my life. He showed me some. I repented. It was so good.
Right after that I walked into the kitchen and Heidi had left her coat on the floor. Even though I wasn’t angry or upset, I said, “Heidi I don’t know why you always leave your jacket on the floor.” And immediately the Holy Spirit said, “THAT.” Those words were spoken from a critical spirit. Yes, Heidi needs to learn not to throw her jacket on the ground, but my words were cutting and critical, instead of life-giving and instructive. It just took that one word from God to show me the difference.
While God showed me plenty of ways I do this in my own life, of course it’s way easier for me to see it in others (ha!). As I watched certain people in the audience at the State Of The Union address, it was obvious, They don’t want our the current administration to succeed. Everything about their body language oozed arrogance and disgust. If our president fell into terrible misfortune, I have a feeling they’d be rejoicing.
That is so incredibly sad. And it’s sad that that sort of filth is in MY OWN heart too. Who in this world drives me crazy? Would I be secretly happy if Rachel Hollis fell flat on her face? No use lying, Jesus sees the heart! Friends, this isn’t for “those people” out there: WE need this truth.
And here’s the thing:
As long as we harbor a critical spirit we can’t house a discerning heart.
There’s only room for one. And during these dark days we desperately need a discerning heart. We need be able to spot RAVENOUS WOLVES. We need to eye those pigs so we don’t waste our pearls.
In ever-increasing measure, we must be discerning people. But discerning people don’t rejoicing over wrong-doing. If I have a vineyard and I go out to inspect the fruit, I don’t inwardly gloat and rejoice and get smug when I find a bad vine. I don’t go, “Aha! I KNEW IT!” When I see some rotten grapes.
There’s a name for this: Schadenfreude. It’s a German word meaning, Malicious rejoicing. It’s being secretly happen when misfortune happens to another. And ultimately, that’s what a critical spirit is. It’s taking just the tiniest amount of joy in finding fault in another.
Who knew that all this was wrapped up in the little words, “Accept people.” But there you have it. Let’s be people who are discerning, wise, careful, skillful in eyeing ravenous wolves and dogs and enemies of the truth. But let us never stoop so low as to rejoice in evil. Let us grieve over other’s sin, not get self-righteous.
Amen? Amen.
Thanks for reading.