This life is not about me. Repeat that 5 times over.
It’s an important reminder and one that we are not used to hearing these days. I remember my parents telling me this often as I was growing up and I feel like we’ve gotten away from this mindset. We now like to sit in a place of constantly thinking about our own needs and our own feelings. We tell ourselves to “honor our feelings” and we spend time focusing on “self care” for hours on end thinking that we will somehow feel better about ourselves. There’s the notion of “you do you” and “me time” and we find ourselves in a place of being stuck in our own emotions and feelings. This is not a good place to be; at least from what I have come to realize.
I can’t operate out of my best place as a wife or as a mother when I am solely focused on myself. I quickly begin feeling sorry that I never get a moment to myself. I start comparing myself to my husband and how he gets a “break” in his office where there is peace and quiet. I compare my circumstances to my friends who may have more childcare than me or moms who just have one child versus several. “Well she certainly gets more time to herself” – Me, me, me, poor me! This is not where I want to be. It’s an incredibly slippery slope and it leads to nowhere good. This all begins when I am focused on one thing: Me, myself and I.
The Lord has gently and so sweetly reminded me over and over (and over) again that it is so not about me, but it often takes me wallowing in my self pity for a little while and then realizing that that’s not the place where I’m meant to sit and I have to re-learn the lesson again. When we focus on ourselves we quickly become jealous or bothered by other people. We think that our problems or circumstances are so much worse than the next person. As moms, we begin thinking that we “deserve” to have alone time and when that doesn’t come easily, we see our kids as a nuisance rather than what they really are – a gift from God and blessings that we never deserved and yet God entrusted us with these sweet little lives to care for.
I think as believers we need the reminder that NO WHERE in the Bible will we find these self centered messages that we hear almost daily. We see the exact opposite. We are to see others as better than ourselves (Philippians 2:3). We are to deny ourselves daily (Luke 14:26). We must be on guard when we come across these self glorifying messages, and as believers, we must surrender daily to the Lord and humble ourselves before Him, as we know that we would be nothing without His sweet grace and sacrifice. We must ask Him to fix our eyes on Him and love and serve others as He has called us to. When we do so, we can operate out of a place of humility and live out our calling as believers. We are no longer martyrs to the tasks of motherhood, we no longer see our husbands as another person who needs our attention, we no longer have ourselves on this self glorifying pedestal. We can see ourselves for what we truly are. Broken and in need of one who is far greater than ourselves. We are a vessel for His purpose and not our own.
It is not about me. Say it and believe it.
Leave a Reply