It’s all in the posture.

It’s pretty easy, and kind of satisfying, to feel bad for yourself. When life hits the fan, you quickly run away from anything that brings you joy, isolate yourself from the world, and throw yourself a big ole pity party.

The last couple weeks, I have thrown myself one of the biggest pity parties of my life. I have sometimes felt like an event planner for pity parties, that’s how much of an all-star I’ve been in this field.

But thankfully, I started to discern that sulking was not going to accomplish much, and I realized that I needed to make lemonade out of life’s sour lemons.

Recently, I’ve been the queen of pity parties

For many that don’t know, this has been the most difficult times of my life. Unfortunately, I cannot reveal everything that has gone down out of respect for the people involved, and so I don’t reveal all their baggage on the Internet.

It’s a season where bad things are happening that are out of my control. Which sucks, because I love control. But God is really teaching me to let go of the need for everything to go perfectly, just how I planned.

In life, we will experience pit-y times. Where we have a lot of stuff happen at once that throws us in a pit of despair, where we feel stuck and too tired to climb out. But this doesn’t mean we don’t need to stay in the pit, get comfortable, and throw ourselves a little party.

When we are all “woe is me”, we lose sight of what’s going on all around us.

I was watching Shaun Of The Dead with my brother the other day, and I couldn’t help but think of this reality in our own lives. If you haven’t seen the movie, the main character is so invested in his own life that he fails to notice the zombie apocalypse happening right outside his front door.

I’m not alluding to the brink of a zombie apocalypse, but I think we can be so obsessed with our own struggles that we forget to look at what is happening around us. We get so fixated on our circumstances that we ignore the good that God is doing in our lives, the opportunities we do have, the people who are still standing by our sides, the light shining through the little cracks of darkness.

In fact, pity parties always lead to selfishness. While we are obsessing over our hardships, we lose sight of everything else and everyone else in our lives. This leads us to focus on the bad, and think nothing is going to get better. When we focus on self, we hit a dead end, because we are not strong enough to lift our ice cream-stained butts out of the pit.

Obsession with self in these matters is a dead end; attention to God lead us out into the open, into a spacious, free life.

Romans 8: 5-8 (MSG)

Does this mean you can’t be sad when bad things happen to you? No, no, no. When storms hit, we need to give ourselves time and love to heal. We need to make room for grieving.

The difference between grieving and hopelessness.

There is a difference between a pity party and healthy grieving, and it’s all in the posture.

Pity parties say: Nothing is ever going to get better. No one cares about me, God doesn’t have a plan for my life. Nobody understands. I just need to accept that I’m going to be in this dark hole forever because there is no way out. Life sucks. (Been there, done that – so don’t feel bad if this is you).

Healthy grieving says: Wow, I am really hurt by what happened. I feel very sad, and like my life got turned upside down. My world feels rocked. But I know that God is going to redeem this situation, and I know if I just hold on and persevere, things will get better. This is not the end, but a season, and every season ends. This is a time to heal. I’m hurting, but I know God has got me and will not leave me in this struggle, and he will see me through.

You don’t need to stay in the pit.

In pity-parties, you’re left at a dead end because there is no hope of anything getting better. But in healthy grieving, you acknowledge your hurt, you bring it to God and trust that he will redeem the hard situation. You bring the weight to him, you let yourself feel all the bad feelings in the presence of God’s loving hand. And while the pain is present, you don’t let your feelings run your thoughts. Because even in the storm, you know that God will not leave you there.

Psalm 40:2 says this:

He lifted me out of the slimy pit,
    out of the mud and mire;
he set my feet on a rock
    and gave me a firm place to stand.

Psalm 40:2

Here’s the thing that I’ve realized no matter how bad life gets: it never stays that way. There is always some form of redemption. We don’t need to stay in the pit if we choose not to.

The three simple ways to get out of the pit:

1. A simple way to get ourselves out of the pit and onto healthy grieving is to acknowledge what you’ve lost and feel the pain. It’s completely okay to feel emotions, whether happy or plain-old devastation. It’s important to let yourself feel when your body needs it.
2. Next, invite God into that pain, and let yourself feel all the bad feelings in his presence. I promise when we acknowledge Him in the darkest moments of sadness and anger, he floods us with such a peace. It’s crazy you can feel two things at once.
3. And lastly, after you’ve let the feeling move through you, experience the Lord’s power to get back on your feet and face another day. Because I promise, it will get better.

After all, John Lennon said:

“Everything will be okay in the end. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.”

John Lennon

You don’t need to stay in the pit. Instead, you can feel the steady hand of God lift you out of the darkness, with your eyes turned toward heaven and your thoughts fixed on hope.