More Than Me

Life is hard. In so many ways. And lately, it's been a lot harder than it has been easy. I recently moved into my new house across town from where I used to live. While moving was a tough thing because I hate changes that big, I was finally getting used to it, and settling into my new room, and guess what happens?! The sewer line breaks right in the hall outside my room! Supposedly my mom hears the toilet "glub, glubbing" and runs to see whats happening when before her eyes, water spots start appearing on the carpet down the hall into my room and out the door. Luckily she frantically pulled up all my stuff off the floor and none of it got ruined. But all the carpet in the basement, and some of the drywall is ruined and there may be asbestos underneath some of it and mold underneath a lot of it. So needless, to say, I've been sleeping in the living room in the midst of a jungle of furniture pulled upstairs from the basement. Just my big, new matress and some blankets.

And though I make light of the situation, it's been a really hard time for my family. All we wanted was to be able to move in peacefully and now we are forced to live out of boxes because we cannot unpack until the basement is fixed. And because it has been forcing me to help other people a lot, I've been realizing how selfish and reluctant to serve other people I am. I am mean. I am stubborn. I don't like being told what to do. I want to do my own thing and have everybody else leave me alone, even if that means them having to suffer for it. And I'm not ok with this. On top of a lot of the moving issues we've been having, I've been dealing with a lot of personal problems too and this only accentuates the problem. I don't like having to deal with other people's problems when I have enough of my own. I feel like if I could just iron out all my crap and get my stuff straight first, then I'll feel free to help other people. It's not that I don't want to help them, I do...just let me fix myself first.

But more and more I'm learning that life is messy. There is no such thing as ironing out all your problems and as soon as your old problems go away, new ones come...but we don't have to focus on them. This is where I struggle. I would be content (if you could call it that) to sit and pity myself all day long, thinking about how crappy my life is (though it's not comparatively), and how my past affects me now, and all the problems I have. But nothing ever gets done that way. So though I've been able to label all my problems and identify them, I realize that I'm at a deadend. Though I know what my issues are, I don't know how to deal with them. And you can say "just give them to God and pray about them" all that you want...but when I think about that, though it's a beautiful idea, it's so abstract that I don't quite know what to do with it and therefore it gets me nowhere...other than sitting her pitying myself for not being able to give my issues to God.

But what if fixing my problems was as easy as putting them behind me. Not in the sense of ignoring them but in the sense of not dwelling on them. What if I decided to take Jesus seriously when he said, "seek ye first the kingdom...and all these things will be added unto you." And if the kingdom is about serving other people and putting other people and their issues before your own, then what if I chose to give myself to this pursuit rather than giving myself to my pity. I'm trusting that if I choose to seek this kingdom out with all the energies i presently spend on thinking through my crap...then God will add all that I need unto me. And I believe that by throwing my issues into him while I focus on building His kingdom, he'll throw wholeness back unto me, and bring healing to the parts that hurt.