EP 105: Practical Steps to Overcome Self Pity

I have been camping out in The Excellent Wife book, and I encourage you ladies if you haven’t read it in a bit to dust it off and bring it out again. It will bring your focus of marriage back to a biblical one.

One of the chapters that surprised me that I gained much from was the one on loneliness.   One statement Martha Peace made in the addendum on loneliness was shared from her friend, “being alone and lonely is not the same thing.  If you are alone (and bored), you can find someone to do something with.  If you are lonely, your thoughts are wrong, and most always involve self-pity.  Martha Peace shared it was her favorite chapter because it caused her to think about and desire the Lord and it quickly became my favorite too.

I know we can all relate to self-pity as women, wives, and mothers.  How many times do we focus on our needs that aren’t met?  Unfair situations or circumstances?  Self-pity is a selfish tendency that takes our eyes off Christ and puts them on ourselves.  We forget that “God works all things together for good to those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.”  Are we able to give God “thanks in all things”?

We need to be reminded that God has a purpose for every situation that comes into our lives and His purpose in every one of them is to mold us into the image of His Son Jesus Christ.

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Read the post below (5 minutes) or listen to the podcast (20 minutes) where I share a bit more content.

Related Resources:

The Excellent Wife by Martha Peace 

Faith on Trial: Psalm 73 by Martyn Lloyd Jones

Psalm 73

Psalm 19:7-11

Practical Ways to Repent of Self-Pity
1.  Be discerning about what you are feeling and thinking.  If you feel lonely and it is painful for you, realize what you are thinking.  Write your thoughts down and analyze each one of them biblically.
2.  Cultivate gratefulness to God and your husband.  Think “thank you” thoughts to God often especially when something doesn't go your way.
3.  Learn to be content.  There are a lot of material things we can definitely live without, and there is a lot of attention from our husbands that we can also live without.  Give your husband blessings instead and think about your responsibility before God to be content.
4.  Realize that God could remove you from the circumstance today if He wanted to but that God's purposes are higher than yours.  And if the Lord does remove you from the circumstance of your husband being aloof or closed off from you, you don't want to be ashamed of yourself before the Lord that you whined and complained and were angry and bitter when (looking back) you can see how God was working even though you didn't know it.
5.  Realize that God has a purpose.  Romans 8:28-29 is true.
6.  God wants you to go against your feelings and think and do what is right.  He will, then, help you not to slip into your self-centered pity-party, “poor me” routine.
7.  Adopt a high view of God through reading and thinking about the Psalms and also reading good books by godly men and women who challenge your thinking.  Read with a dictionary handy in case you need to look up a word.  Read when you are awake and clear-headed.  Also, underline sentences that stand out to you so that you can refer back to them.
8.  View time alone as a grace gift from God to spend more time with the Lord reading His Word and learning about Him and talking to Him.
~Taken from The Excellent Wife by Martha Peace (emphasis mine)

“Self Pity is a death that has no resurrection, a sinkhole from which no rescuing hand can drag you because you have chosen to  sink.”

~ Elisabeth Elliot

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