Wallowing

“Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering.” ― Fyodor Dostoyevsky

There are moments when I feel like wallowing in self-pity. I feel like embracing it, draping it over my shoulders, and lounging on my couch using it as a nice warm blanket – all day, every day. I’’m allowed, right?

There are moments when I want to give up. The appointments, the doctors, the therapists, the evaluation of her progress. Normal, delayed? Why can’t she just be a baby for today?

There are moments when I think I was ignored. Prayers went unanswered. I asked and didn’’t receive.

Wallowing.

A few days before we traveled to my parents’ house for Christmas, I was doing dishes and I felt the self-pity rise up out of nowhere. The “why mes” and “why uses” and “why hers” flooding into my head and dragging me back toward that dark place.

I just stood at the sink and prayed, “Lord, why me? Why didn’’t you answer the way that I wanted?”

I walked over to my bookshelf and I grabbed the Bible and said, “”I’’ll just open to any page and take that as your answer.”” Stupid. I know. The Bible isn’’t some kind of Magic 8 Ball, …but I was wallowing.

I opened randomly and my eyes set on:

Romans 8: 18-30

It was a really good answer.

18 I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. 19 For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. 20 For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.

22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. 23 Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. 24 For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? 25 But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.

26 In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. 27 And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.

28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. 29 For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. 30 And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.

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