My Life Sucks

Seriously. There is so much going on in my every day life that I am entitled to self-pity, right?

Welp, there's a chapter in Father Fiction that focuses entirely on that: Self-Pity.

In it, author Donald Miller speaks to Josh Shipp about his life (he grew up in 20+ foster homes, never knowing his biological family) and asked him how he has been able to become so successful. He replied, "You either get bitter or you get better."

Donald Miller adds, "It's that simple. You either take what has been dealt to you and allow it to make you a better person, or you allow it to tear you down. The choice does not belong to fate; it belongs to you."

I'm not going to state anything profound here: Life sucks. My life has it's craters. Your life has it's volcanoes. His life has tornadoes and her life is full of tsunamis. It's kinda like this video that Pastor Tim shared on Facebook:

Every single one of us has "stuff" in our lives. But what matters is what you do with it.

Donald Miller has a profound, yet simple outlook on self-pity and it's oh, so true. He says, "The reason you sometimes feel sorry for yourself is because it feels so good. I know that sounds odd, but if you think about it, it really does. When I feel sorry for myself, what I'm really saying is that I deserved better, that I am a better person than what the situation has dealt me. And if you think about it, that's kind of an arrogent thing to say...The trouble comes when something hard happens and we chose to stop and milk it for attention. There's no progress in that and it isn't going to get us anywhere."

I get that way. When I dwell, I start to focus on the unfairness. The "oh, poor poor me. My life sucks. I am a good person. I don't deserve this. My husband cheated on me. Some of my friends have hurt me. My family has turned on me. I have an alcoholic dad. My life sucks. I have tried to be kind and loving. I don't hurt people and yet, all this bad stuff rains down on me! Why? It's so unfair. My life is horrible. My life is falling apart. Pay attention to me because I'm complaining. If I can't have a perfect life, at least I can have your attention. I deserve that, at the very least!

But what good does that do? What is accomplished by that?

There is a time to grieve. Grieve for broken marriages. Grieve for death and loss. Grieve for ended friendships and relationships. Grieve for family members and poor decisions and things that hurt you. But grief needs to remain as grief and when it becomes self-pity, you need to have warning flags flying high and them move forward.

I often tell people, when they say sorry for things in my life, that I don't want them to be sorry. I'm not sorry. Seriously, I'm not. It is what it is. When I speak about things, like the affair or my dad or various situations that I'm in, I speak so that I can be a witness to God's glory and grace. God has lifted me up and allowed me to blossom through those messes and He will do that to anyone who asks Him to. I commented to a fellow blogger and said that I was sorry and that I pray that God continues to heal her through her strife and she replied that she wouldn't be who she was had she not endured what she did. It's so true.

Will God change you overnight? No. Will you probably encounter more hurt in order to heal? Yes. But the way I see it is this: Growth is a lifelong process. If I die tomorrow, I want people to say that through all that I endured, I was working to be a strong Christian woman. I don't want them to reflect on how much I whined.

So, does my life suck? Maybe. But it depends on the lens you look at it through. I choose to recognize that I'm human with human interactions and human shortcomings. As a human who falls short, I also have relationships with other humans, who also fall short, and sometimes that hurts me. But it doesn't have to paralyze me. I can (and will) make the best of it.

Will you?