Do you leave people better than when you found them? Are they better for having known you? Do you add value to the people around you, or do you take life away?
Not really easy questions….. For me anyways.

The truth is: I have a history of ME.

I wasn’t in the business to leave people better than when I found them. Let’s be real, that meant my attention had to deviate from me long enough to focus on someone else- and That wasn’t gonna happen. No one was better for having met me. They were less. They were less of who they were before they crossed my path. I have been selfish. A giver wasn’t an adjective used to describe me.

Ever.

Taker. That’s what I’ve been. A taker. Looking out for myself, and leaving a trail of empty people in my wake.

After a decade of ME CENTERED living, you’d think I’d have it all. But I woke up each morning empty. Completely unfulfilled, and still searching. I sought out how to fill that empty space. Over, and over and over. It was an every day, every decision cycle. It became second nature to choose me. To choose temporary happiness (that satan conveniently disguised as lifelong joy). Ironically, with every self centered choice, I was still left emptier than the choice before. I became a shell of a person. Exhausted. Empty. Broken.

It has to become a thought out process to choose something different. To choose someone other than me. To be unselfish. I LITERALLY have to stop! I have to slow life down a bit (A TON), and literally think out my decisions and how they affect everyone else. It’s saddening to think I have to consciously think about others. That that isn’t instinctive. But, it isn’t! My default is ME.

Is your default you? Do you think of yourself before you think of others?

That friends, is the nature in which we were born. We were born selfish. We were born into sin. We were born with a default setting of, ME. All of us. It isn’t until we come to Jesus that we are able to see the joy in selflessness. It isn’t until we look up, that we are able to see others. In light of the cross, we are able to see past our own self.

I’m still very much on this journey of consciously thinking of others, I pray.. It becomes second nature. I’m happier when others are fulfilled, and I see now how miserable I am in momentary selfish satisfaction.

My hope, is that I will leave people better than when I found them. That I would be a light in their life. If even momentarily. I pray they see Jesus in me.