Pride, Resentment, Bitterness and Self-Pity

I was scrubbing sticker residue off of my eight-year-old's dress. At the Uptown Whittier Parade, a cop gave my children each several sticker badges, which they put on their clothes and forgot. So I looked online how to get sticker residue off clothing after it's been through the wash. Someone said use rubbing alcohol, so I dump on the alcohol and am spreading the fabric between my fingers and scrubbing it rigorously. My fingers are hurting and I'm sure these fumes aren't good to breath.

That's when I tell God, "God, I don't want to do this. This is not what I want to be doing right now. Shall I just throw the dress away? It's not my daughter's favorite. She won't even care. She's almost outgrown it. I could give it away. I could donate it to Savers and let someone else scrub off this sticker residue."


I'm scrubbing and scrubbing and can't make up my mind one way or the other on what to do with this dress, so I keep scrubbing and tell God, "I have a college degree in English Writing. I graduated from Biola's Torrey Honors institute. I write poetry. I could write books. I am a smarty pants. This is not what I want to be doing right now!"

The situation was not unlike the Shores of Loneliness in Hinds' Feet on High Places by Hannah Hurnard where Much-Afraid is assaulted by relatives Pride, Resentment, Bitterness and Self-Pity.

"I told you so," Pride would shout viciously. "Where are you now, you little fool? Up on the High Places: Not Much! Do you know that everyone in the Valley of Humiliation knows about this and is laughing at you? Seeking your heart's desire, eh, and left abandoned by him (just as I warned you) on the shores of Loneliness. Why didn't you listen to me, you little fool?"

Then Resentment would raise his head over another rock. He was extremely ugly to look at, but his was a horribly fascinating ugliness. Sometimes Much-Afraid could hardly turn her eyes away when he stared at her boldly and shouted, "You know, Much-Afraid, you act like a blind idiot. Who is this Shepherd you follow? What sort of a person is he to demand everything you have and take everything you offer and give nothing in return but suffering and sorrow and ridicule and shame? Why do you let him treat you like this? Stand up for yourself and demand that he fulfill his promise and take you at once to the High Places. If not, tell him that you feel absolved from all necessity to follow him any longer."

Bitterness would then break in with his sneering voice, "The more you yield to him, the more he will demand from you. He is cruel to you, and takes advantage of your devotion. All he has demanded from you so far is nothing to what he will demand if you persist in following him. He lets his followers, yes, even women and children, go to concentration camps and torture chambers and hideous deaths of all kinds. Could you bear that, you little whiner? Then you'd better pull out and leave him before he demands the uttermost sacrifice of all. Sooner or later, he'll put you on a cross of some sort and abandon you to it."

Self-Pity would chime in next, and in some dreadful way he was almost worse than any of the others. He talked so softly and in such a pitying tone that Much-Afraid would feel weak all over.

"Poor little Much-Afraid," he would whisper. "It is too bad, you know. You really are so devoted, and you have refused him nothing, absolutely nothing; yet this is the cruel way in which he treats you. Can you really believe when he acts toward you like this that he loves you and has your real good at heart? How can that be possible?

"You have every right to feel sorry for yourself. Even if you are perfectly willing to suffer for his sake, at least other people ought to know about it and pity you instead of misunderstanding and ridiculing as they do. It really seems as though the one you follow takes delight in making you suffer and leaving you to be misunderstood, for every time you yield to him he thinks up some new way of wounding and bruising you."

That last remark of Self-Pity's was a mistake, because the word "bruising" suddenly reminded Much-Afraid of what the Shepherd had said when they stood together on the threshing-floor in the Pyramid. "Bread corn is bruised," he had said, "but no one threshes it forever, only till it is ready to be made bread for others. This also cometh forth from the Lord of Hosts who is wonderful in counsel and excellent in working" (Isa. 28:28-29).

We had missionaries over to lunch the other day. They're here on furlough and finding unexpected ministry opportunities in the form of some troublesome neighbors. "This isn't where I'd expected my ministry to be," she said about the situation, and it jogged my memory. Hadn't I said something like earlier in the week? Hadn't I thought that too?

"This isn't the ministry that I want to be doing right now. If it were up to me, I wouldn't choose the ministry of spot treating these sticker stains. I wouldn't choose to rub my fingers raw while my children steal snacks from the snack drawer and bicker over who gets the best seat to watch TV."

It's not what I had in mind either when Paul said to consider it pure joy whenever we face trials of many kinds. Laundry isn't a trial. It's just a part of life. And yet, it's also a place where pride, resentment, bitterness, and self-pity can gain a footing. Thus, it is a trial. It's like Much-Afriad's Shores of Loneliness. And it's a ministry opportunity that perhaps I didn't choose but has been put before me to delegate to someone else or deal with myself. And through these ministry opportunities, we are made more palatable to others.

Quote taken from Hannah Hurnard's Hinds' Feet on High Places: An Engaging Visual Journey. Tyndale House Publishers: 1975. Pg 42-43


More on Motherhood: Mother's Day TestimonyIn the In Between

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