The Sneaky Sin

 

We started the great adventure of potty training. Someone said pertaining to the question, how do you know when they’re fully potty trained? - When you can think 5 consecutive thoughts NOT about potty training, you’re probably there. And I feel like that’s pretty true. It feels a little all consuming, interrupts life, and you do wonder just how long will this take? Like most things in parenting, it reveals more about us than about your kids at times. Like how I annoyed I was at times with something I was trying to teach her.  How quick I was to forget that this was something that she had never done prior to starting. How good she really was doing when considering those facts. Mostly we just don’t like our lives being interrupted. Instead of embracing the interruptions we kick and scream and flounder in self-pity. 

But have you ever noticed that most interruptions are due to our greatest gifts? And when we stop and think about it, we wouldn’t change a thing. Maybe we just like to complain. Maybe we’re not very good at looking beyond ourselves. Whether it’s the person in line in front of us, the phone call we should answer, the person that needs our help, when our priorities should shift and so should our schedule. Motherhood is full of those kind of things, but life for each of us is too. A group I’m in is going through a book and in it it was recently discussing essentially our personal problem areas of sin. Sometimes I don’t always think of self-pity as a sin. I mean, I know it isn’t helpful, joy-giving, or leading me down a healthy mental road, but I wonder if you’re like me and don’t always stop and consider it a sin. But really, where are my eyes? Completely on myself. What does it lead to? Discouragement, whining, complaining, despairing, lack of gratitude, grumpy behavior, maybe even jealousy or resentment, depending on how far you follow it. When I look at it that way, it’s no wonder it’s a sin. But it’s a sneaky sin. Easy to live in, easy to get caught in, easy to come back to. 

When I’m in it, I start hating the very things I love. Sounds like a verse that goes something like this: “…I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate.” Our sin nature, gets us all tangled up. The things I love, like mothering, being a wife, taking care of a home that I have been blessed with, somehow becomes the things I detest when the voices of self-pity start playing in my head. Sure, wouldn’t it be nice if I could be like her, having the pleasure or freedom to do this or that…but all the while these are the very things I have prayed for, and probably the very people I’m securing some of my self-pity from, are doing the same. I’m not stuck. Sure, I may be overwhelmed, or tired, or hungry, or unshowered. But not stuck. Or lacking. When we’ve been given much, much is required. Our greatest blessings don’t always come easy, but God just asks us to be faithful. To steward well. To have been given much that our days, and hands, and minds, and homes are full, or busy, or sometimes overwhelmed or seemingly consumed is a blessing and something to rejoice in, but we (I) don’t always. And then comes self-pity. 

We can still have hard days and trust. We can still have overwhelming days, and be reminded that I am not self-sufficient. We can still sometimes wish things were different, but be mindful of where our heart posture is. Over the past year, I’ve wrestled with how to deal with grief-which is a whole nother subject for another day- but one thing I do know is that God welcomes our crying out, be it in desperation, agony, or praise. And how much more helpful when I’m crying out and being heard than stewing and muttering and wallowing in self-pity. The situation is the same, the words different. It can become a place of meeting us where we need it in the mess of things, or it can become a place of sin and downward spiral. We get to choose.