Friday, April 30, 2010

The Pit is no fun!

So if you follow me on Twitter (Joyfulmomlea) or Facebook, you know I fell in the pit this week. Not literally a pit, but a dark pit of self-pity & self-loathing. Not a fun place. Somehow this is a pit I keep falling into! I disliked myself at that moment. I think what makes it worse is I know I have no reason to be in the pit so I get mad at myself which makes the pit worse!

It's a dark place when you feel alone & feel like you're a bad mom, a bad wife, a bad Christian! I should have seen the pit coming as I've come off of several good weeks (homeschool conference with Hubby, Kids' birthdays, Women's Retreat w/my church). It seems like when I've been up, that's when Satan likes to take any vulnerable moment & turn it against me. The vulnerable moment was when I started really missing my Hubby! He'd been gone for 9 days (total of 12). Rather than taking a moment to miss him & then get on with my day, I wallowed. It's not pretty when we wallow. I sat on the couch feeling sorry for myself. "Poor me! Hubby's away all the time. Poor me! Hubby has all this time to himself & I have to work, work work! Poor me! I have to be single mom a lot of the time. Poor me! No one to give me a break. Poor me! I've let the kids play on the computer or watch tv too much & I'm a bad mom. Poor Me! the kids are being fussy & not obeying. Poor Me!

As you can see, I was focusing on me & all the negative. Fortunately, God prompted me to tweet a little about how I was feeling. That's when I saw a  positive side of Twitter & Facebook. Within minutes, I had friends encouraging me. One friend told me she feels the same way. Another friend said she'd be praying for me. Yet another friend told me I was doing a good job as a mom! That's when I cried & thanked God for showing me how blessed I was/am!! So this time, instead of being in the pit for days, even weeks, I was out of the pit within hours!

So I guess the point of this post is just to tell you that pits happen!! We all fall into one from time to time! When you do, focus on God instead of yourself & tell others! God gave us friends to support us & to encourage us! Stop pretending you're a perfect person who does everything right! or Stop telling yourself no one would like you if they knew what a horrible person you really are! I struggle with the 2nd one more than the first! We are all imperfect! The faster we realize that & reach out to all the other imperfect people God has placed around us, the faster we will climb out of the pit & possibly avoid it the next time!

If you find yourself in a pit, let me know! I'll encourage you, I'll pray for you & I'll even cry with you! We need to stick together, lift each other up & help each other along the road of this imperfect life!!

No comments: