Letting go of bitterness

Have you ever known anyone who was bitter? Have you ever been bitter yourself? I can say yes to both. I have known bitter people, and I have been a bitter person myself. I can sit here today and testify to you that bitterness is a destructive, crippling force.

My grandmother was a bitter woman. I don’t know what happened in her life to make her so, but she was bitter, jealous, discontent and she showered her malaise upon those around her. She could not see beyond her own bitterness. Her bitterness was meted out on her family, and my mother, at the age of 63 years old, still feels the effects.

I have been a bitter person. When I moved here to Ontario nine years ago, I was angry. I was angry with my husband because he had moved us here, I was angry with those around me for not trying to help me get used to a new home, I was angry with God. I remember saying to my husband one night: “Would God truly want me here where I am so lonely and sad?” My husband, wisely, said: “Yes, He would.” But I didn’t believe it. I was angry at everyone. Every little thing around me seemed wrong. I was critical, impatient, I raged inside myself. The root of my problem was that I had allowed a blip on the screen of my life to embitter me. The root of my problem is that I didn’t trust God enough to know that while I was struggling, His ultimate goal was good. His ultimate goals are always good.

Bitterness begins with anger or sorrow. Someone wrongs us or someone angers us or we go through a sorrow or grief. We can’t let go of the hurt and we are slow to forgive. It is our pride that keeps us from letting go. How dare that person offend me! Bitterness can sprout up when things simply aren’t going our way. We see problems in our homes, jobs, and churches and think: “What is the matter with those people?” We don’t like that they are not doing what we expect so we get angry and bitter. I think the tendency toward bitterness is related to the duration of the trial. Perhaps we have a spouse or child who has been ill for a long time. We wonder if it will ever end, and we can become bitter that this illness seems unfair, that God is not answering our prayers fast enough. Bitterness can grow until we begin to view everything around us through the film of our bitterness. That’s what it is like: we have a film over our eyes that obscures truth and reality. Things are hazy and unclear to us.

Paul talks about bitterness in Ephesians 4:

Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.

Look at what is associated with bitterness: clamor, slander, wrath, malice. Those are bad things, aren’t they? Bitterness can definitely result in slander, because sometimes in our bitterness, we feel justified in complaining to anyone who will listen, and soon we are making disparaging remarks about someone. It’s a gradual thing, and we don’t even realize we’re doing it. See what the flipside of this bitterness is? We’re to be tenderhearted, forgiving, and kind. The only way to prevent bitterness is to let go of whatever is causing the bitterness. It means we must accept what God has for us, and trust Him. It means that we must forgive those who have hurt us. It means that the focus of our scrutiny needs to be on us rather than those around us. Ultimately, that’s what bitterness involves, doesn’t it? We look at someone else and point a finger and accuse, whether it is God we are accusing or another individual. We can’t control God or anyone else; we can only control our response with the help of the Holy Spirit, and act accordingly. Bitterness usually involves a lot of blame and finger pointing. We need to turn those pointing fingers back at ourselves and ask what we can do to improve things.

There is a family at my church who has been through dark waters many, many times. As a young couple, they lost a child soon after his birth. He was anacephalic, and he died within days of his birth. They eventually had four children, one of them with developmental difficulties. She was unable to swallow until she was three years old and had to be fed through a tube in her stomach. Today, she is a 16 year old girl, healthy, and delightful, although she will always require some kind of practical care. In 1993, the father, Rick, discovered he had leukemia. For the next five years, his life was a cycle of chemotherapy, bone marrow transplants, near-brushes with death, all which produced the end result of pulmonary fibrosis. He often jokes that if the cancer doesn’t kill him, the treatment will. His lung capacity is about 30% and he generally carries oxygen with him. Sometimes in church, I can hear the tell-tale “click, click” of his oxygen machine turning on. For a long time, he coughed quite a bit, and it became so frequent that after a time, everyone got used to it, and visitors would be the only one who noticed it. Today, he is still, after more than five years, cancer free. He will never hold a job again, but he’s active. He tutors math students, helps at the church, and teaches Sunday school. A bad bout of pneumonia could kill him, but he’s careful to take care of himself. A few years ago, he got on a waiting list for a lung transplant, and when it came time to be re-evaluated, he was taken off the list because he was deemed to be so improved that he was no longer a critical case.

But the story is not over yet. Five years ago on Easter Sunday night, their oldest son, Peter, was driving home. He swerved to miss a cat that had skirted across the road (there was a passenger in the car who survived, so we know how the accident happened) and lost control of the car. He died later at the hospital at the age of seventeen. The death of a teenager can do some really profound things in a church, and it was a time of serious grieving and loss for our church family. The day we went to the visitation, the day before the funeral, I was waiting in line and I was watching the parents of this boy. I could not believe it, and I can’t think of it today without crying, they were holding and comforting those who went through the line. The parents who should have been a mess were standing there giving comfort. They amazed me. They continue to amaze me. They have never, never showed bitterness. When we asked them once if they ever questioned why God had allowed so much to happen to them, Rick said: “I guess He knows we can handle it.” This is a testimony to the power of trusting God and the ability to forgive. Oh, they’ve had their moments; their other son spent three very angry years at the loss of his brother, but this spring, he’s his old self again, smiling, happy. He let go of his bitterness. He will even tell you that. If a teenage boy can learn to let go of his bitterness, we can all do it.