I’ll say right off the bat that I have delved into self-pity. At one point in my life, I wallowed in it, though I didn’t think so at the time. Over the course of four years my husband and I experienced some very difficult circumstances with the births of our children. Our daughter was born with a rare chromosomal abnormality that wreaked havoc on her body, causing her death two days later. I will honor the request of our other children not to write specifically about them, but will say that they have suffered much. When children suffer, their parents suffer, and we did/do.

With each circumstance came an unavoidable agony. Now we knew what C.S. Lewis meant when he referred to God as the great vivisectionist. Three times over, and still counting. Would He never close up the wound, but just leave it gaping so He could get in there again and again to restart the hemorrhage?

There is much that could be written about that period of our lives, but my point here is self-pity. I learned that although the pain we felt was absolutely part of the experience, our response to it was the critical issue. To continue to delve into self-pity with an attitude of legitimacy was not only harmful to our family’s well-being, it was even more harmful to my soul. I needed to rethink my theology of suffering, come to a better understanding of who God is, what He was doing, and who I am in light of that.

Simply put, (but not at all simply experienced) the path to peace was found through repentance and in knowing, truly knowing this: God does all things for our good and His glory. It is impossible to respond to an ongoing agony in a godly way unless my hope rests firmly in that truth.

Oswald Chambers challenges me: “Our circumstances are the means God uses to exhibit just how wonderfully perfect and extraordinarily pure His Son is. Discovering a new way of manifesting the Son of God should make our heart beat with renewed excitement. It is one thing to choose adversity, and quite another to enter into adversity through the orchestrating of our circumstances by God’s sovereignty. And if God puts you into adversity, He is adequately sufficient to “supply all your need.”

2 Cor. 9:8 has given me courage for a number of years. “And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work.” That is very good news to me; something I can hang my hat on.

The “all things at all times” leaves me no wiggle room for self-pity. His grace abounds even when I am at my wit’s end and slammed against what feels like a steel wall. When my focus is on manifesting the Son of God rather than on our difficult circumstances, God will use those times in whatever way He chooses for our good–now and in heaven, and His glory–now and in heaven. And that, folks, is real joy.