Five years ago, I had cancer. We caught it early and had it removed. The margins were clean so we sighed with relief and went on with living, knowing it might come back.

It did.

Again, we caught it extremely early, but this time, we were more aggressive in treatment. We had hoped that by having major surgery — removing all the cancer and then some — that I might be able to avoid chemotherapy. But medicine is sometimes more an art than a science and once they got a good look at that stinking tumor under a microscope, it was determined that I would probably benefit from a few rounds of chemical therapeutics coursing through my veins.

Filled with dread, I made the appointment with the oncologist, images of a balding, nauseated me running through my head.

As I was hanging up the phone, my husband walked in the door from work and announced, “I just got laid off.”

You can’t make up moments like these.

Though it would be tempting to entertain it, one thing I know with absolute certainty: Self-pity is poison. I fear it at least as much as I fear cancer. With good reason. When I was young, I was a highly acclaimed, black belt master practitioner of self-pity. If you needed an expert witness in the effects of self-pity, you could have called me to testify. I’m not quite sure how I developed this corrosive expertise, but thank the Lord, in my 30s it lost its death grip on my heart. I experienced a definitive healing around the issue and knew, for the first time, real freedom from it.

But I still have to be on guard. It bears repeating: Self-pity is poison. It’s also the devil’s playground. If you find yourself poised to fall into the burning cauldron of self-pity, though you might have good reason to, I’d highly advise against it. Far too much of my life was given over to it and I can assure you, it proffers naught but death.

A few distinctions I learned along the way might be helpful. Self-pity, according to the Oxford dictionary, is: “excessive, self-absorbed unhappiness over one’s own troubles.” (Even reading the definition gives me an interior “yuck.”) This means, mourning is not self-pity, sorrow is not self-pity, even anxiety or dread — these are not self-pity. Let’s recall that the Lord’s anxiety was so great in his agony that he sweat tears of blood. His Garden of Gethsemane moment can teach us a great deal about holy anxiety and fear. These emotions can help us to move through life’s more serious challenges. You can embrace grief, loss, anxiety, even fear in sanctity knowing that these may be steppingstones to acceptance and assent, to “not my will but yours be done.”

If Jesus can feel anxiety and dread, you can, too. But he didn’t stay locked in them. You don’t have to, either. We do not have to enjoy our crosses, but we are asked to heroically carry them and there’s no room for self-pity in any kind of heroics, spiritual or otherwise.

God has not given me cancer or crashed the economy, but in his wisdom, he allows these trials and I pray mightily that the greatest possible good will come from every minute of them. And that he will protect me from even an ounce of yucky “excessive, self-absorbed unhappiness.”

Lord of mercy, when the cup does not pass, when the cross feels too heavy, help us to remember that one day You will “turn my mourning into dancing” (Ps 30:11) — even if, at the moment, we’re nauseated, losing our hair, and falling behind on the bills. Amen.

Kelly Stanchina is the award-winning author of 12 books, including “Jesus Approaches,” “Love Like a Saint,” and “A Place Called Golgotha.” Her website can be found at lizk.org.