I Am Dedicated to Dying Without Bitterness

I have a lot of goals in this life. One of my goals is to die without bitterness.

Maybe you think this is a silly goal, but as I have gotten older, it is becoming more and more apparent how difficult this is going to be.

There are so many disappointing things that happen in this life.

As a child many of us believed that the sky was the limit. We looked at adulthood with longing, because we thought it would be filled with freedom. It seemed clear that our adult life would be the place that all of our dreams would magically come true.

We couldn’t wait to grow up.

However, as we enter into adulthood our hopes can quickly be met with a harsh dose of reality.

Adult life can feel quite monotonous and disappointing.

Our timeline for things like promotions, marriage or children is often different than we hoped. Our career can feel suffocating or stagnant. The money doesn’t always pour in like we expected. Married life is not always the honeymoon we thought it would be and parenting can often be more exhausting than we imagined.

Friendships can be difficult to maintain through the years. Unfortunately, some of our relationships become lost altogether.

And then there are the seasons of life that utterly break our heart and almost break us completely.

It is easy to become cynical.

Without even realizing it, our disappointment can lead us to embrace bitterness. Not all at once, but a little bit at a time.

The way I see it, I have two options:

to own my bitterness or refuse it.

To be clear, I know that bitterness comes with many benefits.

When I am hurt, I can use bitterness as an “off” switch. It allows me to hold onto my expectations and resent the way that things turned out. I can then move forward without processing my disappointment, grieving or forgiving anyone.

Bitterness can be quite comforting when I don’t want to walk through the healing process.

Becoming bitter can happen quite naturally, but it comes at a high cost.

Yes, it gives me a free pass not to heal, but it also keeps me stuck in the pain of my experience. My disappointments will forever have a hold on me until I choose to process them.

I am dedicated to living a life without bitterness.

The way I see it, it is a priority for me to master being disappointed. Not because I enjoy disappointment, but because I want to live free.

Freedom.

The freedom I sought as a child is the very thing I am longing to protect.

My freedom to dream.

My freedom to hope.

The freedom to be me genuinely and not hardened by life.

I will not take responsibility for everything that happens to me in my life, I will take full responsibility for what I do with it.

Bitterness is not for me, that is for sure.

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Own Your Hate and Bitterness. They Are Yours.

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This world can be a very difficult place to live. No matter how hard we try to keep ourselves from pain, it seems there is no way to escape from getting hurt in this life. There are times that it can seem simpler to overlook situations that cause us pain, but we must face them. It is essential that we understand our hurts and our brokenness.

In every situation, we are offered time to be wounded. It is necessary that we allow ourselves this time and the grace to be hurt and broken. However, our hurts won’t stay “hurts” forever, they change.

Our brokenness that is left unattended will become bitterness.

Our hurt that is left unaddressed will become hate.

One day, we will wake up and the opportunity to begin the healing process will present itself. At that moment, we will have a choice. If we choose not to begin the journey to be healed, we will begin the journey to hate.

None of us can escape the pain of this life. Sometimes pain comes as a huge defining moment of betrayal, and at other times, it is small repeated rejections. The principal is the same whether small or large. We have the choice to release and heal, or hold on and hate.

We do not choose our pain, but we do choose what we do with it. Once we are no longer hurting, but hating and no longer broken, but bitter we must own our current condition. This is the choice we make when we choose not to let go, but to hold on. This is the choice we make when we choose not to forgive. Hate and Bitterness are our consequence for not choosing to be healed from our pain.

When we choose to heal we aren’t saying that we are ok with how we were treated. We are saying that we are unwilling to let what happened to us define who we are.  

Sometimes it can feel like we have a right to our hate. That we have earned it because of what we have been through. But do we really want our hate and everything it will give us? You see, hate is not content to stay stagnate. Hate demands control. Our hate will change us. It will make us people we never intended to be.

Sometimes this life just sucks. We as people have the capacity to make both, horrible mistakes and horrible choices. We hurt one another both, unintentionally and intentionally.

People can hurt us and cause us pain, but no one has the ability to make us hateful or bitter. We hold the keys to our souls. What we do with the hurt, pain and brokenness is up to us. We get the final say. The days of blaming our hate on other people need to be over. We must own who we are.

I beg you, my friend, not because they deserve your forgiveness,

but because you deserve your healing.

Let it go.

Seek counsel, forgive and find healing.