I just found a mess in my produce drawer. I opened the refrigerator and went to get an orange from the bag I bought last week. And they were rotten. Blue and green fuzz covered the oranges and I had to throw the soft and mushy bag of produce away. Apparently one of them had started to rot and I didn’t notice. As goes mold, it spread quickly over the oranges until they were inedible.
This happens with other things in life too. A defect pops up and when it goes unchecked, it spreads until it devours and destroys. Mold does it to food. Weeds do it in a garden. Cancer does it to the body. And bitterness does it in your heart.
Where Does Bitterness Come From?
It all begins with an offense. Doesn’t matter the size or degree – just that someone else did something to hurt you. Then that hurt was left unforgiven and it settled itself deep down into the cracks and crevices of your heart. It took root. Anger, resentment, and unforgiveness kept watering it. And it grew. And grew. And grew. Until it blossomed into full blown bitterness – a nasty poison that’s difficult to get rid of.
So many people have these long lists of all the people and things that have done them wrong and reasons as to why they deserved so much better. “If only (insert name or issue(s)) hadn’t robbed me of what I deserved, I could have been so much more. I could have been happy!”
And this isn’t some exclusively secular issue. I know many Christians who have a lifelong love affair with bitterness. It’s like a badge they’ve earned for all they didn’t get in life. I hear things like, “After all I’ve done for God, doesn’t He owe me?” Or, “If He really loved me, why did He let this happen to me?”
Bitterness is easy to spot. You can hear it in someone’s voice and tone. You see it in their face – no matter their age. Someone who is bitter recounts the hurt over and over again from memory without missing a detail. They love to recruit an army of companions to be angry over the perceived injustice with them. They hear the name of the offender and cringe…and the rehashing of the offense (and every offense since) begins again.
The Effects of Bitterness
Don’t get me wrong. Many people’s bitterness began with legitimate hurts. But the bitterness they allowed to grow from it is not worth it. It’s just not. The list of effects from being bitter is costly and exhausting. Check them out.
Bitterness prolongs your healing. It causes you to rehash the pain over and over again. Because you cannot release the anger, you stay in mental and emotional anguish for years – or until you decide to release it.
You become more susceptible to anxiety and depression. Because of your prolonged emotional upheaval, you become more sensitive to other emotional hurts and pains. Something that wouldn’t have necessarily bothered you much before will later become an over magnified offense. You worry over more and fixate on negatives until you sink into depression.
You aren’t able to relish the joys things in life. You’re too busy dwelling on the past wrongs. It’s difficult to be hopeful or excited about the future when you’re so focused on things that have passed.
You fantasize about getting even. You think darker and crueler things that you normally never would have before. You’re obsessed with the idea of getting even. The truth is, you likely cannot get even. The offender has probably moved on with life while you’ve stayed in the past.
You gain a cynical nature and it takes a toll on relationships. It’s a trait that’s a turn off to many and it repels people from you. A once pleasant and joyful person can turn into the biggest Negative Nancy and Debbie Downer (no offense to any Nancy or Debbie out there). Others see the change in you and feel the strained connection. It’s difficult to want to be around someone who is bitter.
It compromises your health. Bitterness increases your stress baseline and study after study reveals how stress takes a toll on your immune system, heart health, and overall physical well-being.
Bitterness is a joy-stealer. In the Christian faith, the Bible says not to let any “root of bitterness” spring up (Hebrews 12:15). God knows the way Satan (who comes to kill, steal, and destroy) wants your anger and pain to turn into bitterness because bitter people aren’t focused on prayer, service, or love. Bitterness and love cannot co-exist in the same heart.
What’s the Antidote?
I wish I could say the cure was easy, but that’d be a lie. Bitterness is a powerful poison and it requires a powerful antidote. That antidote will take daily choice and commitment and lots of discipline in regards to your thoughts, feelings, and words. The antidote is forgiveness.
Forgiveness is a process. It begins with the realization that you are flawed too – that you have caused hurt too. No, maybe not to the same degree or with any ill intention; but, if you’re honest with yourself, you’ve hurt someone you know. When we can accept that we are flawed also, we begin to soften and empathize with others in their flaws.
Next, we have to decide we’re going to forgive. The person may not even be alive anymore, but we still have to choose to release the hurt, pain, anger, resentment, and bitterness. No, you don’t wait for an apology that likely may never come.
What does this decision to forgive look like? It begins by daily saying, “I won’t bring this back up. When I think of this person, I will not fixate on the bad. I will choose to acknowledge something good about them or I will switch my thoughts to something else entirely. I will stop talking about the offense. I will stop fantasizing about revenge. Today, I will not give this offense a moment of my time.” You won’t do this perfectly, but tomorrow you get up and make the same decision again – over and over until you can.
For those of the Christian faith, forgiveness means looking at what Jesus did for you and then offering that grace to someone else – it’s commanded. It’s remembering you’re a sinner who has been forgiven (and probably for even greater offenses – after all, it’s the sin of each and every one of us that nailed an innocent Savior to the cross). It requires prayer. And lots of it. It’s the power of the Holy Spirit that is strong enough to forgive someone – not by our own strength.
Life hurts. We get wounded. Will you choose to release it and heal or will you choose to grip it tightly within your hands and hold onto bitterness? It’s not an easy road to journey, but you’re not alone. I’m here and I want to help you mend.