List my tears, God!

Consider Psalm 56:5-8

The big “THEY.” How huge a word that is. Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die. For the compulsive overeater, that poison has many names, among them sugar, corn chips, pizza, cola, and mashed potatoes lathered with gravy.

What is resentment? The Latin root is “to feel”—resentment is to feel again. Feel what? Anger. Anger? What am I angry about, you may ask. Probably the real question is, “What are you not angry about?" Perhaps you grew up believing nice people didn’t feel angry, that good children don’t have bad thoughts. It’s time to rethink that old idea.

We do get angry, and over the slightest things. In the middle of preparing a meal, we’re interrupted when our child comes in, needing us to do something simple. We love the child, it’s appropriate we’re asked to do it, but the interruption is, well, interrupting. The child’s business takes precedence over ours. Maybe in the larger sense we even see it’s proper that way, but it doesn’t stop the fact we felt resentment.

Most resentments aren’t that small. The ones we remember and re-remember, the angry moments we live time and time again are far from small. It can be from decades ago when your mother would not have stopped to help and the child was you. It can be a terrible wrong, a crime, committed against you. Until you take them out and look at them, they remain. And as they remain, you deal with them. For compulsive eaters, we deal with most problems by numbing the pain with food.

The psalmist resented. “All day long they twist my words; they are always plotting to harm me. They conspire, they lurk, they watch my steps, eager to take my life.” What do you resent?


Who is your “THEY?” Why do you resent them? Take a piece of paper, and along the left side of the page write the names that come to mind of people you resent, skipping a line between each. Add ideas (you can’t date until you’re 16, respect your father, etc.) and institutions (the church always just wants money, the bank won’t leave me alone.)

Go back and briefly describe why you resent that person, idea, or institution.