Feeling the Bitterness

Have you ever felt bitterness just trying to rise up in? I'm trying to fight this feeling with all my might. I'm not trying to be one those people who throws herself a self-pity party and I'm not trying to be a tired, mad, bitter black woman that the world is so fond of portraying and hating.

But it is hard sometimes not to want to let those feelings over take you. Its actually easier to be bitter and mad then to rise above it and move on. In this journey we all will experience the desire to be bitter. To snarl our teeth and lash out at a world that sometimes deals us the short end of the stick.

We'll want to blame others and hold grudges and ... I've been there. But I'm reminded of the advice I gave my young people at youth group one night last year.

We can't change other people, the families we are born into, sometimes we can't change our circumstances or the way things happen. We can't control a lot of things but we can control ourselves. How we act, how we react, what we learn, how we press on- that is what we can change.

So I'm choosing not to be bitter because things aren't going the way I might want them to go. I'm choosing to trust God and the process. This is definitely not easy for me. At all.

But life is all about choices and just because bitterness wants to pull me in I gotta fight to get outta that trap.

"I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me."

Philippians 4:13 

...to be continued