Consumed with Myself

I believe I was about 13 years old when I first heard the phrase:  “Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it’s thinking of yourself, less.”

The need for humility hit me hard when I was a teenager, deep in thought and dreaming about the future. I thought SO hard about my future, from who I was going to marry, to what I was going to be and where I would live, what degree to get and where to go to college. I thought myself in circles, which eventually landed me in the ER to be treated for stress induced ulcers and acid reflux. During that time in my life, God taught me a lot about learning His will and trusting Him with my future. He also taught me that at the root of my stress, was selfishness. There was an obvious imbalance in the time I spent thinking about myself, to the time I spent in the Word and thinking of others.

Later on, this same concept hit me in the face as I dealt with self esteem issues. At the heart of my self doubt, lack of confidence, desire to be prettier, skinnier and more popular, was the fact that I was plain old, spending WAY too much of my time thinking about…myself!

I again needed a reminder of this in college, as I got caught up in the stress of classes and work, making more life changes and decisions on what direction to take. I find it most difficult to keep my focus on others when I have decisions to make, and for some reason, way too easily find justification for stressing over the future.

I love how Francis Chan puts it in his book, Crazy Love

Did you catch that word, reek? How true is that! Arrogance is pretty strong stuff, and chances are, if you’ve been infected with it, your friends have noticed! He points out that stress “…says that the things we are involved in are important enough to merit our impatience, our lack of grace towards others, or our tight grip of control.”

The human race was born into selfishness, it is our natural tendency and biggest downfall. Yet, I am still amazed at how well it hides itself and manifests itself in so many ways.

At the heart of your self esteem issue, stress, anxiety, tiredness, many forms of depression, even good things like volunteering at church, serving the homeless, and so on – selfishness may be hiding.  Even on our BEST days, in our BEST intentions, selfishness may be lurking around somewhere. With every “selfless” deed we do, there is very often a small part of our mind that, if nothing else, hopes to be seen and praised. Wow, this all seems rather bleak doesn’t it? Read on, you can do something about it!

As a mom, too often I get up in the morning and find the first thing out of my mouth is “uugh, the kids were up soooo many times last night, I hardly got any sleep. I feel miserable.” Unfortunately, it usually doesn’t end there. Rather than praying for an attitude check and making a conscious decision to be “joyful always” my misery continues through the day as I choose to stay consumed in myself. This is the stage of life I am at right now. God has done some amazing work in my life when it comes to trusting Him and not stressing about things. Lack of sleep is my current greatest offender. I am learning to anticipate the times my selfishness is apt to affect how i handle my kids, answer my husband, or respond to someone in need. I need to frequently take stock of my thought life and ask, is the majority of my time being spent thinking of myself?

Humility is not self deprecation, it is laying aside our own agendas, pity party, stress, bad moods, tiredness and excuses, for the good of others.