Feeling sorry for myself

When Gary was talking about "footholds" in our lives last Sunday, I couldn't help but think of how many times I've felt sorry for myself - lately and throughout my life. Intellectually, I know that feeling sorry for myself doesn't make too much sense - I am a perfectly healthy woman living in a beautiful home in a beautiful country. My marriage is happy, my kids are healthy (mostly) and my work is satisfying.

Still, it is what gets me down quite easily. I find myself in a comparison trap - one where I compare all that I know of my life to the very little I know of multiple other people's lives. In the end, I come out with "less". Less time, less money, less looks, less personality, less holiday time, less freedom, less, less, less, less.... Feeling sorry for myself is a vulnerability for me, a persistent vulnerability to say the least. Emotionally, it's still something that I get trapped by, side-kicked, brought-down.

I did a search of "feeling sorry for myself" on Google and found out that I am by far and away not the only one with this foothold. It's kind of funny to see what people write about feeling sorry for themselves, although it makes you immediately aware of the power of thoughts when someone is suffering from a mental illness, such as depression.

There is one site called "43 Things" and it is a place where people write down what it is they want to accomplish. According to this site, 78 people want to "stop feeling sorry for myself". Another article I read, that I quite enjoyed was written by a British novelist who won a big award for his writing and has now lost the underlying reason to feel sorry for himself. Click here to read "It pains me that I can no longer feel sorry for myself". The funniest line to me is at the end of his article, "My only solution thus far has been to feel sorry for myself that I can no longer feel sorry for myself. Bit perverse, but it works."

I wonder sometimes if I am attached to the "habit" of feeling sorry for myself. I've only begun to think about this as a "foothold" since last Sunday's sermon on the schemes of the invisible enemy, so the thoughts are fairly fresh. It just seems that no matter what happens in my life (good or bad), I find that I move (sooner or later) to the same old trap of feeling sorry for myself. I will say that I have seen progress in this journey at some points. Tremendous progress at some points, but then, without expecting it, I find myself telling myself why I should feel sorry for myself - it's justified. My mom calls this self-talk "the committee". She's often talked about the great freedom one finds when you fire "the committee". "They're useless" she says.

I've been thinking of preaching at church again (in the next year or so) and "feeling sorry for myself" is one of the themes that has been on my mind. With this in mind, I read a chunk of Job. He didn't seem to have this foothold. In fact, when his kids are all killed, his livelihood is taken away (all animals and servants killed or looted), he doesn't lament over "I wish it could be the way it used to be". Instead, he actually wishes that he would never have survived childbirth. He wishes that life never would have even started for him. He wishes that there wasn't breast milk given to him, or that he would have been stillborn. This is certainly a low point for Job.

But, it isn't the same type of low point as feeling sorry for myself. I don't think it is, anyway. Feeling sorry for myself isn't wanting to die or quit. There is something inherent in feeling sorry for myself that wishes things would magically change or improve. It's a wishing that my "lot in life" would match up to someone else's lot in life. There's an element of comparison, longing, jealousy, wishing, hoping.... correct me if I'm wrong here, but it seems somewhat different than quitting. Can it lead to wanting to die or quit? I think so.

I was suspecting when I started reading Job that I would find a picture of a man who felt sorry for himself. I don't read that in the first 3 chapters. There is a whole lot of other stuff in there, but I'm not sure feeling sorry for himself is part of it. Of course, he sits silently scraping his boils for seven days before he tells his friends that he wishes he wasn't even born. It's impossible to know what he thought of in those seven silent days - expect to say that he went downhill pretty far. The "committee" was clearly telling him his life is useless.

It was really meaningful for me that we sang "It is Well" on Sunday after the sermon. There is one line in that great old hymn that challenges and encourages me every time I sing it, "whatever my lot, you have taught me to say... even so, it is well with my soul."

What are your thoughts on the whole topic of "feeling sorry for myself"?
Is this something that you have found to be a 'foothold'?

Adding your thoughts to this post will make all the difference. Most people will be readers only, but there will be so much more to read and process if you add a thought or two of your own.

sharon