It Is Not About Me

It Is Not About Me:

It’s not about me. Life is not about me. I am just sorry it took me a eight days of the flu to figure this out. That it took away about three pounds of hard earned muscle in the heat of track season. That I burned a 105.9 temperature at home during final week of third term. That we failed on a theater competition because my body fired and my lungs charcoaled. 

Life is not about me. It’s not about you. It’s about us. It’s about Him. It’s about His glory. It took a week of being stripped of my Independence to learn that life is about Dependence. Dependence on Him and His never ending Grace. 

A wise woman named Joanne Parker told me, “Don’t get puffed up in the head, Mary, just don’t get puffed up.” I smiled and said, “Yes ma‘am.” But I did get puffed up in the head. I was prideful about my grades, my friends, my ‘religiousity”, my athletic and theatrical ability. It is amazing how one could find pride in me about almost any subject. 

When did it become all about me? I have always struggled with pride, but it was amplified when I started High School. In High School, they make it all about you. “Your Grades” “Your Involvement” “Your Sport(s)” “Your Clubs” “Your Friend Group” “Your Emotions” “Your Future” etc. So I was drowning in self-absorbtion in a self-adoration culture. 

And being sick taught me this. One by one, God gently took my idols away. “Mary, your grades don’t matter, I matter.” “Track and your athletic ability are gifts, use them for my glory.” “Mary, it is good to be weak, for when you are weak, I am all the more strong in you”.

You see, life isn’t about our glory and what we have done, it’s about what He has done, and giving Him glory for it. Our brightest trophies fall to stained, torn rags in front of the Creator. 

And this is why I write, to remind my self of the age old cry, “All Glory be Forever!” Yes, I still struggle with pride. I want life to be about me. But there is no joy in a life spent on one’s self. Jim Elliot said, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.” Jesus said, “For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” 

So I lose my life to gain it in Christ. It’s about Him, and nothing else. It is not about me.