I imagined opening the sliding glass door and sitting on the rain soaked deck…letting the wind and rain chill me. Mourning. Crying out. Asking the universe to pity me. Pity. My favorite flavor of approval. Yes, approval comes in many flavors. Applause, encouragement, lust, envy, and even pity gives validation…it says to the mourner, “I approve of your pain. You are JUSTIFIED!” Sadly, the work which is meant to be done by God alone, and yet we turn to others to approve us, to justify us.
So I realized that pity is a form of approval and that I have set up pity as part of a pantheon of idols!
I have asked you, God to tear down my idols; to help to do it anyway…to show me where they are…what they are. Oh, how large and shiny PITY must be. I heard the voice of the enemy again today…he draws me back in my own memory to the 7th grade…back to being 5 when I first tasted the sweet, hollow pleasure of pity.
I worship it.
I bow before it.
I long for it.
It owns me.
I have let it secretly own me.
Now that I’m older and have been in a mostly healthy, long-term relationship…now that I have tasted of the sweetness of real love…pity is simply an addiction. When I fear I can’t get the REAL thing….my heart immediately returns to the old stand-by.
Brenda is distant. She is in her own place that really has little to do with me. That’s sad. I’m sad about that. I miss her. I want her back. But what I CAN NOT DO is try to substitute some kind of pity for what she is unable to give me.
Maybe she’ll never figure it out. She may never be able to express her love. She SEES me…but it is never followed up with letting me see HER…which would be a very loving and intimate thing to do.
I don’t know exactly how to deal with that prospect…but today at least I understand that pity is not a substitute, and God, you are graciously burning it away. It hurts like hell. But I will try to be very quiet…I will not cry out. I will not cry out for pity.
I went to two of my friends yesterday and told them what was going on in my head and my heart regarding these “other women”…I have asked for remedial accountability from both of them.