Feel sorry for yourself

1-8-08

Negative:
I was drunk, and I knocked over a vase in the dining room. It shattered. I got a broom to sweep it up, but I was having difficulty standing, and I was weaving all over the place. Dad walked in just in time to see me nearly lose my balance and stagger to catch my footing. I stood there weaving, knowing I was caught, and I think I had a grin on my face. Dad looked so shamed and angry and disappointed, like there wasn't an ounce of laughter in him, like it was the darkest day in history and all his deepest fears had come true.

"Where'd you get the booze?" was all i remember him saying. Well, that and the expression on his face and the dark tone in his voice. It crushed me, and made me feel lonely and rejected.

Positive:
Dad was coming home, and I heard him coming in the door, and ran to the door, yelling with joy, "DADDYYYYYY!" just in time for him to open the door and reach down and catch me in his arms. That's about all. I don't remember if he caught me in his arms and looked me in the eye and told me he loved me, or that he was proud of me

Well boo freakin hoo. Get over it. Forgive him, get over yourself and get on with life. That's what my heart is saying. Stop feeling sorry for yourself.

My head feels fuzzy and I feel tired and hazy and drowsy and lazy.

Jesus, I forgive you for allowing to happen what you allowed to happen. I forgive myself for feeling sorry for myself. I feel sorry for myself.

WHY THE HELL SHOULDN'T ANYONE FEEL SORRY FOR THEMSELVES? That's one of those things people say that I've always taken for granted: that one shouldn't feel sorry for ones' self. But I feel sorry for others, in a compassionate way. Why should I not feel the same for myself? I'm not talking about that sort of wallowing hopeless despairing kind of feeling sorry, but rather the "You shouldn't have had to go through that. I am so sorry, and my heart breaks because of it" sort of a sorrow. This kind of self pity allows one to move on, so long as hope and love and forgiveness are at the bottom of the bucket.

Jesus, give me this sort of sorrow. Give me Godly self pity. Surely, you wept for yourself in the garden? Did you? Didn't you cry out to your father? Didn't you cry out to your friends? And left all alone, didn't you weep just for your loneliness?

Yet you still forgave and made the decision to move out of the sorrow into victory. Sorrow and pity are not at the heart of our humanity, or even our intimacy. For in the end, all sorrow and pity and tears will truly be no more. We know it in the deepest murkiest depths of our being. And perhaps it's this knowledge that tears and sorrow and darkness and pain are truly fleeting that makes us want to hold on to them, because they are at least familiar. Darkness and pain and sorrow do not grow and mature. They fester and remain unchanged, like the thick dirty still black air at the bottom of the deepest cave. We can wrap ourselves in a blanket of sorrow and it need never be changed. in this blanket, we will always have something familiar, something we know that we can touch when all else is strange and changing and confusing and unsure.

But until we can truly feel sorry for oursselves, the way our savior does, how can we continue to grow close to Him? If we will not accept his ache over out wounds and trauma, how can we accept his healing?

Jesus, let me feel your ache, in your time, in your place, in the manner of your choosing.

But only say the word and I shall be healed.