Learning How to Die.

Learning how to die. I feel like that is definitely what I have been learning lately.  And you’d think having been in the dorm for almost 2 years now, I would have it down, that I would have already learned this. But yes, 2 years in, I am definitely still trying to understand this, to do this—to die to myself.  Being an RA is such a busy position. I feel like I go, go, go all the time. I feel like I am constantly pouring into the girls, into other people, and I feel like, selfishly, there is no one here pouring into me. I feel like God is specifically trying to work on this with me. Lately I have been so aggravated and upset about not feeling like someone is caring for me as I have been caring for the girls.  (It can be hard in a constantly changing community where people are always leaving (my 2 good friends both left last year) and with having a 9 hour time difference with family and friends back at home—skyping and communication is so hard!).

But then at an engagement party, a pastor spoke a few words to the newly engaged couple, but I felt like he was speaking directly to me.  He quoted Luther about sin, and how it is man curved inwards, always demanding his needs be met.  And that is exactly how I have been feeling.  My focus, shamefully, has been turned inwards.  While I care for the girls, I have been desperately wishing someone would do the same to me.  Don’t get me wrong; I do definitely feel that it is healthy to get rest and to get what you need, but I realized that I had been so focused on myself that I was get irritable.  It was all about me. And then I remembered a quote a little girl with cancer who spoke at my high school soccer banquet said, “It’s not about me. It’s about Christ working in me.”  And that’s really what life is about. It’s about putting others’ needs above myself. It’s about being sacrificial.  It’s about giving up my life, my needs, and wants, for His name, for His glory—and practically that looks like being sacrificial to my girls, to my staff, to my fellow RAs, and strangers I don’t even know.  Holding them in a higher regard than myself. 

“This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.” 1 John 3:16

“Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” John 15:13

I’m not going to lie.  Being an RA can be really exhausting.  And I definitely don’t have dying to myself down anywhere remotely perfect, but this is definitely what I feel the Lord is teaching me.  Jesus laid down his life for us.  Even in his daily activities, he was always helping, healing, and loving on people.  And being on the mission field, I often feel like that (maybe not healing people ;)). He had his friends caring for him, but he also always made sure to get away and have alone time with his Father who poured into him.  One of my favorite observations is that he also allowed for interruptions, for the unexpected.  On his journeys, he stopped for those he saw on the side of the road, those he wasn’t necessarily expecting to meet; but he stopped and cared for them anyways.  And when I think of it, those are times I have really enjoyed the most—when it’s 11:30 at night and I’m pooped, but there’s a girl who wants and needs to talk.  I may be so exhausted that night and even wake up the next day even more tired, but inside there is a joy I have found in laying down my need, say for sleep, to bless someone else.  And I think that is what Jesus meant when he said:

“If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.” Matthew 16:24-25

Sure, I think “life” can sometimes literally mean sacrificing the physical life and being a martyr, but in more every day terms, I’m finding that it means my needs, my wants, my desires.  It may not always or ever be so easy, but I think there is definitely life and joy in giving it up for others, for the sake of my God.  So I’m trying to press on and remember that it isn’t about me and continuing to pour into my girls, to pour out as Jesus poured out and to be refilled by our Father, and attempt to make my girls more and more beautiful, to present them before the Lord pure and spotless.