The Life of the Pity Party

One of the best things to come from being a sister of SAO was that I gained best friends who helped keep me in line. They helped me evaluate if my intentions were true and of God, or if Satan was knocking on my door. The other day, I was wallowing to one of my best friends whom I had met through SAO. I was telling her about everything that was going wrong in my life right now and then I threw in a casual, “just pray for me.” I could tell in her demeanor something was off and she didn’t even need to say it. I knew she was indicating that, no, she will not pray for me while I host my pity party.

Self-pity is described as "excessive, self-absorbed unhappiness over one's own troubles." And lately, I’ve been in a pretty intense and fast paced relationship with it. While I understand there are some aspects of it that are part of mental exhaustion and high anxiety, I know that the majority of it stems from my newly refined pity party planning skills and refusal to shut the party down. At this point I want to ensure that it is known that self-pity and mental illness such as depression are two different things with two different definitions and what I am talking about here is self-pity. Instead of the joy I should feel over future opportunities I know my job will provide, I’ve been wallowing in the struggles and frustrations I currently face. Instead of rejoicing over my impending marriage to my best friend and the best fiancé ever, I am immersing myself in the woes of having no venue and nothing working out. Instead of exciting anticipation of celebrating the upcoming holidays that will be filled with family and relaxation, I’m dreading the current and ongoing planning it takes to make sure we see everyone, knowing they want to see the newly engaged couple.

Holy crap – I know. If you’re saying “get OVER IT” – no offense taken. I’m saying it too.

What I see here is allowing a few disappointments, in what are supposed to be joyous occasions, drag me down into the bowels of my self-pity party, attended only by me. And come to think of it, Satan.  I have allowed my self-pity to take over my head, my heart and my soul. As one devotional puts it, “not a good thing. Not a God thing” and therefore, I think it’s a ‘sin thing.’

However, I had a predicament on how to biblically handle my pity. I saw a quote that said “Self-pity is hoarding our sorrow instead of giving it to the Lord” but then read in Luke 9:23, “Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.” In my mind these two contradicted each other – give it to God but also carry my cross, how do I do that? First off, giving it to the Lord doesn’t mean he will provide me great mercy at each cross I am preparing to bear and thus allow me to not bear it. It’s inviting him into my burden to ask for that mercy or to ask for strength and understanding of the cross. But in order to do this, it must be understood that these troubles are my current cross and with being the life of my pity party, I’m not denying myself to their woes and thus I am not following the Lord. If I am not with the Lord, how can I invite the Lord into my sorrows and ask for His help and strength?

In the greatest depths of our pity, how do we continue to pick up our cross and thus invite Jesus into our struggles? Once again we turn to the Lord. Paul writes in Romans 8:28, “and we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.” We must remember that in these times where we feel sorrow because of non-joyous happenings in our life – that God has the bigger picture and we must have faith that, if we deny ourselves, pick up our cross, and follow Him, He will help make us stronger in the wake of our next pity party. One of the benefits I see in getting older is now being able to get a glimpse of God’s master plan and to see how some of the hardship puzzle pieces fit together to direct my life in the way God intended. And sometimes, we encounter a harsh reality of understanding that some of our most painful experiences were just as painfully needed. Think about one hardship in the last ten years where, from the ashes of the pain, joy was found. My response? From the ashes of the pain I felt, I was able to help found the Alpha Epsilon chapter at UW Madison. From the pain I felt, many ladies have hopefully reaped the benefit of a Christian sisterhood at UW-Madison. And in that thought, I would go through that burden and pain again knowing that the outcome was this Christian sisterhood. What’s more beautiful is when I went through it the first time, I didn’t know that was the outcome.

It’s easy to be the life of your pity party. But it’s also lonely. And in that loneliness we try to find comfort in complaints to those who may (or may not) listen. However as Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 1:3-7, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ. If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer. And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort.”

Let’s vow to find our comfort in the Lord and only in the Lord will we be redeemed from our pity party.

Written by: Kayla Lemmon