Changing Focus, Post 1

In the torrent of emotions that come with a miscarriage or fertility struggle, our focus can become skewed. I know saying this won’t win me any popularity contests, but the truth is that we too often become very self-absorbed. This realization hit me hard one day, after a close friend became pregnant. I found myself wanting to be pitied and cajoled. I expected, and even wanted her to feel ashamed that she could get pregnant and I could not. I, of all people, should have understood her joy and rejoiced with her, but I was too focused on my own situation to be the friend she needed me to be.
           

The Holy Spirit used this incident to open my eyes to my own selfishness. It was His grace that gave me the opportunity to see myself objectively, through the eyes of those around me-- and what I saw turned my stomach. I had become bitter, brooding, and easily injured. I had become a person that thrived off pity and actively sought it out in my relationships with others—the kind of person that always had to have the upper hand when it came to who was suffering the most. Then came the apex to my selfishness: I was so obsessed with my own suffering that I found myself secretly wishing she would miscarry so that she could be as miserable as I was. How far had my own self-obsession come that I could find comfort in others’ tragedy?
           

I was (and still am) ashamed and humiliated to think that I allowed infertility to change me into such a person. I had become the kind of person I usually tried to avoid. Had people noticed my attitude? Had they been avoiding my company? Had I become the person everyone dreads talking to, the notoriously negative woman?
            

 I had allowed my heart to become so calloused that I was wishing evil upon those who were supposed to be my friends. Writing that down is difficult. It’s embarrassing to admit just how absorbed I had become with my pain, but anytime we take our focus off God and turn it to our circumstances, we find ourselves becoming a person we never thought we could become.

Don't look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too. You must have the same attitude that Christ had.   Philippians 2:4& 5
           

It is difficult to keep our gaze where it should be during any trial or tribulation, but to pull our attention away from our Creator and focus it squarely on ourselves is spiritual (and relational) suicide. How do we change, though? How do we keep our focus right when we are in such a personally tragic situation? It is not easy. I won’t pretend that it is, but it is necessary.

Don't let evil conquer you, but conquer evil by doing good.   Romans 12:21