Ok. It’s time for me to confess something. I am often a REALLY negative person. I know that negativity is toxic. I know that being pessimistic is a miserable way to live, but it is so easy for me to focus on one thing that is going wrong in my life and completely forget about the ten million amazing things that are happening in my life. I so often ignore the positive things because I think that I have a right to be angry about this one thing that’s going wrong. (If we are being completely honest, it’s usually more than one thing that I feel like I have a right to be angry about.)

But where does this get me? Do I really feel any better about myself or the situation by dwelling on the negative aspects of it? Do I actually get any kind of relief or release by being angry, bitter, and sad? Does the horribleness of the situation actually justify my emotional response? If we’re being completely honest, no... to all of the above questions. I never feel any better or get any kind of catharsis by having such an emotionally charged reaction to a particular circumstance.

Now before you get all defensive, I am not saying that you should never feel angered, hurt, or sad because of something that has happened. In fact, I do think that you have to let yourself feel those emotions before you can move on from the situation. But here’s where the problem is.

Whenever we become fixated on the negativity of the situation, we inhibit ourselves from ever being able to recover.

Like I said, it isn’t wrong to feel strong emotions about something, but you have to move on. If you stay stuck on how horrible a situation is, you will stay stuck in the situation. Period. You cannot move forward or progress if you never change your perspective on the issue. True healing starts when you start to realize that even though whatever happened sucks, the situation does not have to define the rest of your life. God is bigger than whatever circumstance you may face, and He can give you the healing that you need to move on. God offers this freedom to us, but we have to be the ones to accept it. And we cannot truly accept it if we are stuck in a mindset of negativity.

This is something that I struggled to understand for the longest time. There have been so many times in my life where I have become fixated on being bitter because of something that happened. As a result, I became increasingly frustrated with being stuck. I would like to say that I learned my lesson the first time that this happened, but that was not the case. It took me more times than I care to say for me to understand that I have to be a willing participant in my own recovery. God cannot make me accept the healing that He offers. I have to be the one to accept it.

And the fact of the matter is sometimes healing hurts at first. Anyone who has ever had any type of surgery can attest to this. The same is true in this situation. In order to receive the healing that God offers, we have to change our perspective. This hurts. We have to stop being the victim. We have to pick ourselves up and let go of whatever painful thing happened to us. This process is not easy, and it is often time-consuming. But when you start to feel the freedom that God offers, you understand that every minute of the pain was worth it.