Hi friends!

So sorry about the scant postings as of late–life’s been a bit hectic.

See, on top of heading back to school, I’ve also been preparing for the LSAT.

I know. I know.

Typical liberal arts neerdowell progression.

BUT!

In my defense, I did not want to go to law school–my friends and family can vouch for that.

However, my dad and I prayed a few weeks back about it and God gave me a sign so I’m trying to be obedient.

Still, thus far, preparing for the LSAT has been a bumpy ride, and not infrequently, I find myself thinking things about the test that are not particularly nice.

In fact, this moment from Pirates of The Caribbean: The Curse of The Black Pearl captures a bit of how I feel when I’m three hours into a study session and the Logical Reasoning section is making me want to die.

Only replace “parlay” with the words “if, only if, if and only if, unless, sufficient, and necessary.”

Seriously.

I never thought such simple words could so vex me, but the LSAT test writers are clearly trying to test me.

Which is fine.

That is their job, after all.

I know this.

I understand.

And yet, the pinpricks of ill will persist inside my head, and I know–I know–if I don’t do anything about them, they’ll lead to the very thing I want to talk about this week:

Resentment.

Miriam-Webster Dictionary defines resentment as “a feeling of indignant displeasure or persistent ill will at something regarded as a wrong, insult, or injury,” and when I’m in the throes of an unpleasant study session, I find myself regarding the LSAT as guilty of all three.

Indignant displeasure describes my sentiments perfectly.

However!

In life, being on the receiving end of wrongs, insults, and/or injuries (real or perceived) is an inevitability, and thus, I am glad the LSAT has been #testing me because it’s forced me to think about and develop four steps that, at least for me, are helpful for resisting resentment.

And I think they apply to life generally!

So…

If you, like me, find yourself struggling with any kind of resentful feelings when someone (or something!) does you wrong, pays you an insult, or causes injury, I hope these steps help you like they’ve helped me!

#1: Reality Check

In brief, this step–the first step to resisting resentment–is the “it’s not you, it’s me” check.

Because I don’t know about you, but more than once in my life, I’ve been in a situation where I get miffed, perceiving something/someone as wrong, insulting, or injurious, when, in reality, I was just primed to get ticked.

In fact, at this point in my life, I’ve noticed a pattern which is that I, Sarah, have a toe edged into resentment during particular times, which include, but are not limited to:

Past 10PM at night.

During those wondrous seven or so days of the month where wearing white pants is a hard no unless I want to risk looking like I’ve been shot in the thigh.

When the thermostat exceeds 75 degrees Fahrenheit.

Or when the Logical Reasoning section of the LSAT is making me want to die.

Any or–God-forbid–all of the above combined are times when I will be somewhat displeased already, and in those instances, it behooves me–indeed, I think it is my responsibility–to stop myself and ask, whenever something or someone pushes me over the edge,

“Is this/that actually wrong, insulting, and/or injurious, or am I just prepped to get pissed?”

Because if the answer to the latter is yes, harboring ill-will is not okay.

It’s just self-centeredness.

The world does not revolve around me, you see.

And if the reality of the situation is that whatever was said/done to me was totally benign, I’m just overly sensitized, ill-will, let alone resentment, simply isn’t justified.

After all, it’s not anyone else’s job to cater to me and my idiosyncrasies, and even if it was, mind-reading (as I’ve discussed before) is currently beyond human capabilities.

HOWEVER!

The case may be that in reality it is not just me.

What was said/done really was a wrong, an insult, and/or an injury.

And if that’s true, we gotta move to step two.

#2: Remember Who You Used To Be

This may just be a me thing, but I’ve found that when I suffer a wrong, insult, and or/injury, I tend to immediately assume a posture of incredulity.

Like, in my head, I’ll be thinking,

“I cannot believe you just did/said that!”

“What the absolute heck?”

“Are you coocoo bananapants?”

I’m basically Vizzini from The Princess Bride:

It’s inconceivable to me that someone would act/speak like that.

And yet…

While I think it’s normal to be taken aback when someone gives you any kind of whack, the line of thinking that says, “I can’t believe you just did that!” contains an assumption that, I submit, primes the mind for resentment, and it is this:

“I (Sarah) would never do or say that.”

I don’t know about you, but it’s been my experience that statements like that are just flat out inaccurate.

I mean, I’ve done quite a lot of no-good, very bad things and assuming a posture of pearl-clutching in the face of a wrong, insult, or injury, is little more than a display of Ursula-esque selective memory:

For most of us, sainthood is simply not the case, and the problem with thinking things along the lines of “I can’t believe what they just did/said” (i.e. “I would never do that”) is that it feeds self-righteousness.

Self-righteous people tend to be rather stingy when it comes to grace.

I mean, they’ve never done someone a wrong, paid an insult, or caused an injury.

They’re perfection itself and don’t need any leeway or help, so why would they extend either towards someone else?

…

…

…

Here’s the truth I’ve found:

It’s very easy to be resentful and think the worst of somebody else when you think the best of yourself.

And that typically comes when you’ve forgotten yourself.

I know personally that when I start feeling resentful, it’s because I’ve forgotten just how rotten I used to be.

It’s happened less since I started CC, I think.

I mean, a big part of why I started this blog was so that I would not forget who I used to be, but just to be clear, before God got to me, I was just no bueno.

Like muy feo.

Definitely.

And I am still FAR from perfect as evidenced by the fact that for my dorm room this year, my aunt saw fit to get me this:

My family is hilarious.

They know me so well.

And things like that block help me check myself.

That’s really what my first two steps for resisting resentment are all about because, at least for me, self-centeredness and/or self-righteousness are typically contributing to whatever ill-will or indignant displeasure I might be feeling towards someone else, and if I get a handle on those, resentment usually handles itself.

But not always.

There have definitely been times when someone’s done me a wrong, paid me an insult, or caused injury, and the upset I’ve felt hasn’t dissipated even after I’ve checked myself for self-centeredness and self-righteousness.

And in those instances, I’ve noticed a commonality which is that the wrong, insult, and/or injury done typically isn’t the first or only one.

It’s something that the person has habitually done, and when they do it again, the ill-will I feel is a response not to the particular wrong, insult, or injury but to the ten, twenty, or a hundred+ other times they’ve done the same thing.

Which brings me to step three.

#3: Practice Forgetfulness

If you know me, you know I do my best to commit things to memory.

I try to keep track of names, significant dates, prayer requests, and the things I watch and read (tips for which I’ve written about previously).

All of the above are good things.

However, the downside of this is that I’ve somewhat trained my brain to hold onto anything that makes an impression on me, including wrongs, insults, and injuries.

That is not a good thing.

Because keeping a running score of how many times someone has wronged, insulted, and/or injured me makes resisting resentment difficult.

Exceedingly.

And I think that’s true for most everybody.

I was re-reading C.S. Lewis’ amazing book The Great Divorce recently (if you haven’t read it, it’s about a bus ride to Heaven where the riders can choose to remain in Heaven or go back to purgatory), and what stuck out to me this read was the fact that a significant portion of the people who elect to return to (or never even leave) purgatory have really, really good memories.

They remember every wrong, insult, and injury (real or perceived), and they aren’t going to let go of them for anything.

“The past was all I had!” One denizen of purgatory says.

“It was all you chose to have,” corrects a resident of Heaven. “It was the wrong way to deal with sorrow. It was Egyptian–like embalming a dead body.”

Friends, embalming the wrongs, insults, and injuries we’ve been dealt can be so, so tempting.

I get it.

I understand.

But dear friends, I also believe that doing so will keep us out of Heaven, both in this life and the next.

C.S. Lewis captures this sobering reality well in The Great Divorce when a resident of Heaven tells one of the riders from purgatory who is intent on recounting all the wrongs done to him,

“If it would help you and if it were possible I would go down with you into Hell: but you cannot bring Hell into me.”

You cannot bring Hell into Heaven.

It is an impossibility.

And from what I’ve experienced and seen, if someone refuses to let go of past wrongs, insults, and/or injuries, they end up in a hell of their own making, which is why I’ve made it a practice in my own life to forget the wrongs, insults, and injuries done to me.

And here I think it’s important to be very clear about what “forget” means.

See, if you look at forget’s etymology [“for-” (away, opposite) “-get” (to grasp)], its more passive construction is “to lose one’s grip” but the more active construction is “to refuse to grasp.”

For me, that’s what practicing forgetfulness is in the end.

It’s saying,

“I will choose to let go of wrongs, insults, and injuries. Not because they didn’t hurt. Or because they don’t matter but because I know holding onto them hurts me in the end.”

The alternative is to dwell and dwell and dwell, and often that does nothing but leave you in a living Hell.

I don’t want that for myself or for anyone else.

So, friends, if you can, I urge you to try to refuse to grasp the wrongs, insults, and injuries you’ve been dealt in the past.

However, if you struggle to do that, I completely understand.

It took me a long time to get to a place where I could let go of wrongs, insults, and injuries, especially the ones that really, really hurt me, because a part of me always felt like,

“Okay, I get that resentment is bad for me, but the fact that the person who did me a wrong, paid me an insult, or caused injury gets to get off scot free seems just patently unfair. And if I let go of what they did, who else is going to care?”

And to that, friends, I have only one answer, and it’s that there is a loving God out there who, when you suffer any sort of wrong, insult, and/or injury, always, always cares.

And that brings me to my final (and arguably most important) step for resisting resentment.

#4: Let God Get ’em

I recently finished my third re-read of Twelve Years A Slave by Solomon Northup, and friends, I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again, if I were Queen for the day, that book would be one of the ones I’d make required reading in the US of A.

In sum, it recounts the true story of how he was kidnapped in New York in 1841 and sold into slavery in Louisiana for twelve years before being rescued.

The entire book is just incredible, but it’s the final chapter that never fails to knock me flat.

In it, Northup details the sham trial his kidnappers underwent where they told the court that he, Solomon Northup, had happily sold himself into slavery.

The jury agreed.

The men were set free.

But instead of raging and absolutely rhetorically eviscerating his kidnappers and the jury (something I probably–almost definitely–would’ve done), this is what Solomon Northup said:

“A human tribunal has permitted him to escape but there is another and a higher tribunal, where false testimony will not prevail, and where I am willing, so far at least as these statements are concerned, to be judged at last.”

The first time I read that, it felt like I’d been hit over the head.

Here was a man who suffered abject brutality, humiliation, and degradation and yet…

His response to that final injustice wasn’t resentment.

It was confidence.

Solomon Northup was utterly confident that a human tribunal would not have the final word in the end, and that the wrongs, insults, and injuries committed against him would ultimately be addressed.

Friends…

I think a lot of resentment often stems from a belief that there’s no ultimate recompense for wrongs, insults, and injuries.

We feel like we have got to be the ones to see justice, whether on a big or small scale, done, and if we can’t, well, you can bet we’re going to hold a grudge.

And if there’s no God, that makes total sense.

But.

And it’s a big but.

I believe there is a God, and I believe what Ecclesiastes 12:13-14 says,

“This is the end of the matter; all hath been heard: Fear God, and keep his commandments; for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.“

God’s got an ultimate repayment plan in place.

Human tribunals and fallible individuals will not get the final say, and I can personally attest that trusting God for ultimate justice does a heck of a lot to keep resentment at bay.

But don’t just take it from me.

One of my personal heroes, Rachel Denhollander (the survivor and lawyer who spearheaded the movement against USA Gymnastics doctor and sexual abuser Larry Nasser) put it like this in her magnificent Harvard lecture on reconciling justice and forgiveness:

“Only in Christianity do I have the ability to release personal vengeance and trust that justice will be done apart from my personal response because I can trust God to bring that justice on my behalf and to bring it perfectly. I can release my desire to retaliate, and I can pursue that good standard of justice without bitterness and without anger, knowing that that pursuit is also a reflection of God’s truth and God’s character.”

I couldn’t have said it any better.

So, friends, I’ll end with this:

Romans 12:17-19 says,

“Repay no one evil for evil. Have regard for good things in the sight of all men. If it is possible, as much as depends on you, live peaceably with all men. Beloved, do not avenge yourselves, but rather give place to wrath; for it is written, ‘Vengeance is Mine,’ says the Lord. ‘I will repay.'”

There will come a day of judgement where every wrong, injury, and insult, big or small, that’s been done to you and to me is dealt with once and for all.

That’s a good thing. A great thing.

But.

And it’s another big but.

I suspect that you, like me, have not only been the recipient of wrongs, insults, and injuries but also the perpetrator of those exact same things, and when that day of judgement comes, God’s repayment plan is going to apply to us all.

And so, if, as Ursula would say, you’ve ever had the odd complaint and recognize that you are not, in fact, a saint, now would be a good time to figure out how your wrongs, insults, and injuries are going to be repaid.

And if you’re not sure, I have THE BEST news for you today!

Which is that Jesus Christ died for your sins, was buried, and raised to life again, and if you put your faith in Him, you will not only not have to endure the Day of Judgement, you will get to spend eternity with Him.

It is, I can attest, the absolute biggest of wins.

That’s all for this week!

If you want to support me, please subscribe and share!

It costs you nothing 🙂

It’s just nice to know I have readers out there!

This is my Father’s world:
O let me ne’er forget
That though the wrong seems oft so strong,
God is the Ruler yet.