‘Pity-Party Me Not’

A sample from Book 8

 Pity-Party Me Not
  
 save your grace
 ‒me crying in your face
 maybe it's best to walk away‒
 not have your good spirits replaced
 with my selfish-daunting embrace
  
 don't let me crowd your space
 in a lost self-pitying race
 I have to find my way
 backward steps
not to trace
 get up
move forward‒ 
there's a dream to chase
 ‒a gift
in my heart
God† did place
  
 in all that oh-poor-me lace
 ‒wasting day after day
 I put aside what's great
 for others' self-demeaning fate
 ‒those who lost faith
 not giving time of day
to words God† had to say
  
 that day after day
turned to year after year
 willingly serving myself up‒
 a circling, dead-horse tray
 my own bed made‒ 
self-pity's prized bait
  
 around and around
up and down
burying my I
 around, around, around‒ 
a circling maze
 ‒down, down, down
in self-pity I laid
  
 to whomever'd sit and listen
I'd saturate‒
 serve self-pity's cake
 jump in with pleasure
without thought‒ 
bathe
 smothering my I in hate
 on self‒ 
adding burdensome's weight
  
 flying free
in the greatness of unease‒
 my eyes‒ 
lost in sedate
 ‒shielded behind bondage's tape
 over my happy‒ 
anger's blackened cape
 misery's base
I did drape
  
 I closed all gates
let the sun's ray
 slowly sink to night's blackened gray
 ‒down, down, down
in a mercury-ladened lake
 'til I laid in waste
 seemingly sealed in a darkened cave
  
 I held on tight‒  
my wilderness-mentality trait
 fighting against moses' trusting faith‒
 doing whatever it took
 ‒forget heart's break
 with constant play‒ 
attending every sinful date
 ‒hearing God's† words
refusing to obey
 falling down, down, down
not caring what's at stake
 from reality‒ 
wanting to separate
 losing to evil's webbing spray
  
 everyone turned‒ 
from me
ran in haste
 'til self-pity became my only mate
  
 then came the day
deep inside me‒
 God's† hand began to vibrate
 my wavering faith
evil couldn't take
 ‒mixed-up signals
my heart began to translate
 at first
a slow rate
 raising from a bottomless crate‒
 I began harder to pray
  
 through all my mistakes
 for me
God's† patience did wait
 cradling me
as I lay
 ‒drowning in self-pity's tears
 softly patting my back‒
 knowing how slow this I operates
 telling me:
  
 it's going to be okay
 take your time
it's your way to make
 no matter the pace
it's never too late
 ‒whatever the case
 I'll† help you break
evil's enclosed vase
  
 harder I did pray
 hearing clearer His† words
 stronger became my faith
'til that magical day
 His† light alone‒ 
out of that darkened cave
 my way
He† did pave
  
 here and there
self-pity comes, says hey
 for moments‒ 
again
I lose my way
 but as light as a needle of hay
 He† lifts me
 ‒His† light pours within me
 an abundance of rays
 blinding evil's come what may
 filling me with gentle's taste
 ‒oranges, apples, grapes
fruits of my labor
 the brilliance of grace
my truth in faith
 proving to me
nothing stands in my wake
  
 so, each time
self-pity‒ 
I seem to embrace
 just give me space
 let me alone face
find my own way
 backward steps
less and less to trace
 each new day
faster and faster
I replace‒
 that wilderness-mentality trait
 ‒evil's webbing embrace
oh-poor-me beckoning date
 soon to disappear
without a trace
  
 the deeper I pray‒
 quicker and quicker
I re-find my way
  
 with purer, stronger faith
 realizing
it's not just a dream to chase
 it's a gift‒
 in my heart
God† did place
  
 so, my self-pity
please don't embrace
 turn away
give me my moments
to pray
 my special one-on-one date
 just me and my Lord†
 ‒heavy in faith
immersing my I
 in words He† has
to say
  
 ‒no time limits placed
on days I pray
 just know when I emerge‒
 I'm stronger
heavily armed in His† way
 so each tomorrow
I'll easily face
 for I'm endowed‒
 smothered happily
   in His† amazing grace

Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze. For I am the Lord, your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior….—Isaiah 43:2

Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kind of sufferings, and the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast. To him be the power for ever and ever. Amen.—1 Peter 5:10

(June 11, 2015)—In Battlefield of the Mind by Joyce Meyer, I learned about the wilderness mentality and its grave affects on our mind if we forsaken ourselves and not hand over our problems to God.

I’m now reading 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do by Amy Morin.

Chapter 1, titled ‘They Don’t Waste Time Feeling Sorry for Themselves,’ is the first of these 13 things. Self-Pity. Now there’s a mouthful.Morin gives a list of how self-pity hinders our lives:

It’s a waste of time.
It leads to more negative emotions.
It can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
It prevents you from dealing with other emotions.
It causes you to overlook the good in your life.
It interferes with relationships.

I can attest to all of these! Self-pity is the devil’s most prized hand. It’s a constant whisper in our ear telling us all these lies and, the funny thing, we believe it because these words are whispered when we are at our weakest.

All those nasty little thoughts that swarm around in our mind telling us the opposite of what our hearts are saying, that’s not God. The devil has a shrewd way of making these nasty thoughts sound more realistic, so, it’s easier for these beginning thoughts, if left unattended, to build to more nasty thoughts, and then more and more. We don’t see that all are lies!

When we are lost in darkness, anything that motivates our self-inflicted wounds, we accept because we want to believe them. We so easily cancel out the truth of God’s word during this time because, well, feeling sorry for ourselves is much easier and makes us feel righteous in our own selfishly, indulged moments and we will talk out loud about it every chance we get, thinking that it helps us, but all it does is hinder us more. I know. I’ve been there.

It took a lot of self-discipline to get me out of this cycle. It didn’t matter what others were telling me. I heard them. I just chose not to listen. I’ve learned, through all of this, that we are on individual journeys of self-discovery. People can try and help us all they want. Nothing totally gets through, until God is ready for it to get through.

In my personal experience, I was sent a lot of angels with the same message, but delivered in different versions. Little by little, the message slowly broke through. I see now that I’m a strong-minded child of God and He well knows this because, of course, He made me. He knew how long it would take for me to break through. Did He give up? Not a chance in hell. That’s His greatness: That pure, graceful patience.

He didn’t give up on me, no matter how hard I pushed back, no matter how far in the darkness I chose to sink myself, no matter how far away from Him I ran. Nope. He kept coming at me…sometimes, slow and steady, sometimes, hard and fast. No matter what I did, His love kept coming through. It didn’t matter if I lost faith and gave into the devil’s spidery hands. It didn’t matter if I totally closed myself in and took to crying and hating. Nope. He just kept coming at me. He stood by me when all else failed me.

The only person who held steady, as He seeped through her when He couldn’t reach me, was my daughter, then the miracles came for me and her. Together, we have been rewarded with unbelievable rewards that firmly and totally destroyed all doubt.

Oh, the devil still has its play. I’m not, at all, that solid that evil doesn’t even have a chance. I’ve learned that if I let my guard down just a little, then the doors open for that web to snatch my mind again. My defense, my only defense, is that of the Word of God.

My daddy once told me that the Bible teaches us how to live and how to die. He’s so right. Those words that grace the pages of that book weren’t written down for the sake of writing something down. They have true meaning.

All the stories that lace those pages are what we writers call show don’t tell writing. In place of those stories, the writers of the Bible could have just written commands in long, boring lists demanding us to follow them or else. Instead, the parables (stories) that were passed down year after year were written down so their meaning wouldn’t be lost. When we study these stories, each individual person gets a different answer. Sometimes, we can read one story and take away a particular meaning, then read it again and take away a whole different meaning.

Poetry is a lot like that. No, take that back. Poetry is just like that. Maybe, that’s why my journey turned to the writing of poetry. One single poem can mean one thing to one person and mean something totally different to another. That would mean that just one of my poems could affect hundreds of hearts with all having a totally different interpretation! How extraordinary is that! Now, that, in itself, is doing God’s work.

This morning when I sat to write, as I do every morning, the rhyme scheme using words like face, trace, cake…overwhelmed me. I was reading Morin’s book and ‘Pity-Party Me Not’ came into play.

As I was writing it, on the side of the facing page, I deviated and began writing all these words that blended in that particular rhyme scheme. I wrote all the words that popped into my mind until they just stopped, then there was this voice way back in my mind that said: Now, use every single word.I took this as a challenge and replied in the silence of my mind: Okay, you’re on!

This has happened many times to me before and I have always enjoyed the rush of the word play, but this time was different. As I wrote, I realized I was writing my truth in a way I’ve never seen it before. I saw clearly how self-pity played its role in my life and how, with God’s help, I am overcoming it.

The battle is not won, but when it all becomes clear, there comes with it a realistic approach to how to win. When I wrote the last line of this poem, a huge smile crossed my face. My heart was lifted so high that I believe my feet left the ground for a minute. Oh, the power of His grace is amazing, truly amazing! I am so grateful to have been given this beautiful gift of writing. So much clarity has come to me lately that I can’t stop talking to God.

One such clarity puzzled me a great deal…for a second! All the work I had done from 2008 until 2011 on my chapbooks, I had to undo. I did that a couple of days ago. I was scared. It was a lot of work, but the direction in which my writing is going has changed. What I’m to do with all this poetry I’ve written, which is getting closer and closer to my goal of 3,000 titles, is now clear. So, though I had these slight doubts and kind of a tightened-up-I-can’t-believe-I’m-doing-this face during the undoing process, I threw up my hands and pretty much said to myself: The hell with it.

This feeling is just too strong to ignore. Through all the confusion on why I was writing what I was writing when it came to my poetry, I have now been given a clear, no-doubt-in-my-mind direction, and, oh my gracious Lord, I must be on the right path because ever since I’ve been given this insight, my path is trying to be halted.

I’ve been stung by a spider or ant (can’t figure it out) while standing by a picnic table talking to a childhood friend on the phone at the park after a terrific 3-mile speed walk (the entire left side of my right forearm doubled in size and hurt and itched for a week!), then on a walk with my dog, Paige, we stumbled on my daughter’s cat, Annabel, which went missing a few days prior…silly me, I immediately picked her up without thinking that usually she runs from me in the apartment and, now she just laid there.

Paige went crazy barking and Annabel went crazy hissing and scratching and biting that I had to drop her several times, not paying attention again that she didn’t run away. I came out of the battle with a serious bite on the middle finger of my right hand. (Annabel was brought to the vet the next day and it was determined that her usual lazy stance on the window seal, where she had already tore the screen, caused her to fall, breaking her hip in several places, which led to her biting me because she couldn’t tell me that her hip hurt.)

Notice both incidents injured my right arm and hand; hence, my mouse-clicking, working hand which I need to do my work, and then, yesterday, I suffered from a stomach problem, which is most probably the result of a store-bought stool-softener, or a Mexican sparkling water I tried, or the combination of both, keeping me between the bed and bathroom all day and half the night. The devil hard at work against God’s plan. It doesn’t win. I have heavy artillery: God and His Word!

In sharing my personal experience, I hope that you can see that we all need God to help us fight against evil. All that B.S. called depression, anxiety, worry, etc.,…that’s the evilness of the devil. Nothing more. Nothing less.

By just building our faith through reading the Word of Christ, thinking about what we’ve read, and feeling its meaning in our hearts, we build a strong-hold defense and our minds begin to clear, our journey’s way comes to us with clarity, and we experience more peacefulness in our thinking. No one has to know how you regain your peace of mind. It’s between you and God, and that is all that matters. Be good to you. Be joyful in heart.

Experience a good walk in nature appreciating what’s around you. Regain your balance. Feel, again, peace in your mind by doing away with the cobwebs the devil has placed there. You are so worth it! You are given the right to enjoy life to its fullest. Take it. Make it yours. Feel the love given to you. It’s all your choice. Free will at its best. Love the skin you’re in.

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