"Am I stuck in the victim or martyr role and letting it steal my joy?"

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Genesis 37:34 “And Jacob…mourned for his son many days.”

Have you ever asked people how they’re doing and have them answer (usually with a long sigh), “Ok…under the circumstances?” When that happens, I’m tempted to respond with, “Under the circumstances? What in the world are you doing under there?” Because God’s plan for you and me is that we will rise above our circumstances and choose joy.

Choosing to have joy in our lives is a challenge under the best of circumstances. And loving a prodigal seldom results in the “best of circumstances.” When we’ve been walking this path or any hard path for a long time, we are sometimes going to be weary in body, soul and spirit. How could we not be, and how could we not grieve what’s been lost?

Joseph’s brothers had stripped him of his “coat of many colors” and sold him into slavery. Then they killed an animal, bloodied Joseph’s garment and took that garment to their father Jacob. It says a lot that they used this robe, the symbol of Jacob’s favoritism, to tell Jacob that his favorite son was gone.

Unless we’ve lost a child, we can only guess the pain Jacob must have suffered. But we who love a prodigal know what it’s like to be devastated by his or her behavior. Watching our hopes and dreams for our loved ones burn up before our eyes is a terrible loss too, isn’t it? So although we can’t know exactly what Jacob was suffering, we could probably hazard a guess. No wonder Genesis 37:34 says Jacob “mourned for his son many days.”

I’ve seen parents and spouses in so much emotional pain I could almost reach out and touch it. And I’ve experienced that kind of sorrow myself…the kind that is so huge, it takes on a life of its own. There’s nothing wrong with mourning what we’ve lost and, like Jacob, some losses will be “mourned…for many days.” There’s nothing wrong with that either. However, it can become a problem if we begin to feel sorry for ourselves and get stuck there.

There’s a huge difference between taking time to recover from a loss and choosing to stay there and wallow in it. Jacob’s “other sons and all his daughters rose up to comfort him; but he refused to be comforted.” (Gen 37:35) I understand Jacob’s grief…really I do, just as I understand your grief and my own. However, it isn’t that Jacob couldn’t be comforted; it was that he refused be comforted. He was stuck, and he had no intention of trying to get unstuck.

I know our pain is real, and I also know we often don’t have a choice about that pain. However, our sorrow is only a part of our lives, not the whole. And if we’re not careful, we will find ourselves “under” the very circumstances we should be learning to rise above. That “poor me” mind set can be addictive, and if we choose to stay there, we shouldn’t be surprised if we’ve lost our joy.

Challenge for Today: What might happen if we, just for today, refused to feel sorry for ourselves?