Inconvenient Truth

There is a reality that sits in my soul as an inconvenient truth, we can’t FORCE anyone else to see what we see, and even if we could, we can’t force them to care. 

I often feel burdened mentally or emotionally by the weight of the “needs” surrounding me in a way that it seems few others do. In recovery, my attempts to meet the “needs” surrounding me tends to get labeled co-dependency.  We live in a very “me-centric” society and I admit that even in my life, as much as I am aware of this reality and bothered by it, I too live in a “me-centric” way.

Centric…why is this the word that keeps spinning in my head?  Me-centric.  

Centric = in or at the center; central.  

Yep, that’s it!  Each of us live with ourselves at the CENTER of our focus.  We are primarily and sometimes EXCLUSIVELY focused on ourselves.  How do I feel about that?  How does it affect me?  What do I want?  What do I need?  How can I get MY needs met?  Essentially, with every decision we make, most of us subconsciously ask ourselves “what’s in it for me?” and if the answer to that question is not compelling enough, we pass. 

Caring for another human being requires us to throw our me-centered center of gravity off; to take our wants, our perceived needs, our thoughts and desires out of the center of our focus and think more exclusively about the person in front of us, either physically or metaphorically.  

When I was a kid, I saw the nucleus of my life not as myself, but as my family, my neighborhood and my church family.  The world didn’t spin on an axis around my needs, wants and desires and I am SO glad that I was raised the way I was because I was raised to SEE and CARE about the needs of others.  

My parents had expectations of us that didn’t take our preferences into consideration.  If the trash needed to go out or the dishes needed to be done and it was my job to do that, I didn’t think about if it was inconvenient to me or if I WANTED to do the dishes or take out the trash….I had to stop what I was doing and take care of what needed to be done.  Me-time…or that time I spent on myself was not my first consideration, me-time was what I had when my responsibilities had been accomplished. 

When I was a kid, if we had a neighbor who needed help, we dropped what we were doing and helped them.  If there was a family at church who needed help moving, we rallied the troops and helped them.  

My parents were both raised in families where there was dysfunction, but when their parents needed help, they didn’t look at their childhood and say, “My parents really made a mess of things, they can take care of themselves in their old age.”  They said, “The Bible says, ‘Honor your father and mother so that you may live long in the land your God has given you.’”

They gave when it was not convenient.  

They gave when others were not necessarily grateful. 

They gave when they were tired and they never asked for much of anything in return.  

They are still that way.  They give but they don’t hold their hand out with any expectation of receiving anything in return.  

I have a friend who you might say is like that to a fault as well, who gives not only when it is convenient, but when she sees a need and she doesn’t just give a little of herself, she gives until it hurts.  She gives what she has to give and genuinely doesn’t seem to care what’s in it for her.  She doesn’t ask anyone else to put her at the center of any axis and she doesn’t place herself there even when in my opinion, maybe she should just a little more. 

The times my life has centered on an axis around me, my thoughts, my feelings, my desires, my preferences, or even my perceived areas of brokenness, I have become extraordinarily anxious and depressed. When I’m at the center of my focus, there is NEVER enough.  There’s not enough time, money, energy, entertainment, attention, recognition, or whatever else it is I “think” I need at any given moment to truly feel satisfied with my life. 

We are all “spending” our lives.  Every last one of us.  Every minute of our day is like a penny and we spend it somewhere.  A penny seems like nothing.  Most people these days wouldn’t even stop to bend down and pick up a penny because even if you did that 100 times, you probably can’t even buy a candy bar in most stores.  

Pennies are almost worthless.  It seems minutes are the same.  

How many pennies have I spent in my lifetime playing “Toon Blast” or that silly little game where you pour bottles of sand into each other until all the bottles are full.  How many times has a game I’ve been playing said, “26 minutes until you can play again” so I download another game to play until I can play that game again?

How many pennies have I spent in my lifetime mindlessly scrolling through YouTube or Netflix looking for something to watch?  

How many pennies have I spent carelessly “killing time” until the next thing I’m looking forward to? 

I haven’t seen a wishing well in MANY years.  Sitting here thinking about my life and all the me-centric things I’ve hoped for I wonder….what if every minute I “spent” thinking about myself were represented as a penny in a wishing well, how much room would be left for water?

You have 1440 minutes every day.  

10,080 minutes in a week. 

43,200 minutes in a 30 day month. 

525,600 minutes in a year. 

42,048,000 minutes in an 80-year life. 

That’s a lot of minutes.  

Let’s say you averaged 8 hours of sleep a night over those 80 years….

that leaves you with 

960 minutes a day, 

6,720 minutes a week, 

28,800 minutes a month, 

345,600 a year, and 

27,648,000 minutes in an 80-year lifetime and NONE of us is promised 80 years.  

One penny…so what? 

Sixty pennies….won’t get you much.  Why not watch another episode?

960 pennies….a day gone?  That’s not even $10.  I can afford to waste a day.  

What if you averaged one hour per day pouring your life into making someone else’s life better?  

Sixty pennies.  

What if on average, you spent sixty pennies a day on someone else?  Taking someone who can’t drive to a doctor's appointment, helping an elderly neighbor weed their garden, making a meal for someone who had surgery, or sitting on the front porch with a hurting friend listening to them talk?  

What if you were to invest sixty pennies a day tutoring a child who is struggling in school, throwing a baseball with a child who doesn’t have a father, or picking up litter in your neighborhood?  

What if you averaged sixty minutes a day offering to help when you hear someone is moving, sitting with an elderly family member and listening to them tell the same story for the one hundredth time?  

What if you spent those pennies as a greeter at church, holding babies in the nursery or running a camera for a service?  What if those pennies were invested in a local club that plants trees in the community, takes care of abandoned animals like the humane society or rocking drug addicted babies in the NIC unit at the hospital?  

What if they were invested in shoveling your neighbor’s driveway, collecting canned goods for a local food drive or teaching a Bible study?  

When we are elderly, if we can think past our own aches and pains, we can invest those minutes in Spirit led prayer for others, writing letters to encourage young people as Paul did, calling young people not to tell them about our woes or ask for help, but to ask them what is going on in their worlds and ask them how we can pray for them.  Young people can learn from what you did wrong as much as what you think you did right, but if they don’t think you genuinely LOVE them, your words will fall on deaf ears.  How can you PROVE your love?  Give them your pennies…..

Do you notice how as I continued to talk, my language shifted so naturally from pennies “spent” to pennies “given or invested?”  

Sixty pennies won’t even get you an ice cream cone at McDonalds.  

Sixty minutes won’t get you much either but what happens over 80 years?

Sixty pennies a day turns into 21,900 pennies in a year and over 80 years, that sixty pennies a day on average turns into 1,752,000 pennies invested in the lives of others over a lifetime. 

You might think that number is impossible because you might not start selflessly serving others until you’re in your 30s, 40s or 50s but in MY family, we learned to serve others as soon as we could walk.  My mom took us to nursing homes as VERY young children to visit elderly ladies we didn’t even know and those ladies LOVED to see us.  Sometimes those ladies would have a little something for us like a piece of hard candy and sometimes we had to sit in the corner and color or just listen to old people talk, but without knowing it, I was learning to LOVE. 

As a kid, we helped a LOT of people move.  When my parents knew someone was moving, they’d load us up and while we weren’t super strong and may not have always been the most helpful, we could carry a lamp, a small box or a bag of clothes.  We didn’t sit on a tablet acting bored while our parents worked, we were expected to jump in and help.  When our neighbors needed their leaves raked because they were elderly and could no longer do it, we were sent out with rakes to help.  All the kids in the neighborhood pitched in.  Some neighbors gave us a dollar or two and some didn’t but whether or not they could pay, we pitched in to help.  

I hope God lets me live to be 120 years old like it says in Genesis 6:3 NKJV “And the LORD said, ‘My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, for he is indeed flesh; yet his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.”

I don’t want to invest 1,752,000 in the Kingdom work of LOVING others sacrificially over a lifetime, I want to invest more…. and to be honest, I have probably exceeded that number in my 46 years.  I don’t say that as any sort of a “look at how good I am” statement, because at my core, I am still “me-centric.”  I still consider myself FAR more often than I would like to admit.  I still hold resentments toward people who have not appreciated the pennies I’ve spent on them.  

If we start counting those pennies and see how they add up from a me-centric perspective, we start thinking about what we could have done for ourselves with ALL THOSE PENNIES!  SO MANY PENNIES!  

To give an hour a day on average thinking more about someone else than ourselves seems like SO MUCH to ask….but if you take those 1,752,000 pennies and convert them to dollars, that’s only $17,520 over a lifetime.  That’s nothing.  Can’t even buy a new car with that….and think of HOW MANY cars a person tends to own over an 80-year lifetime.  

1 John 3:16 “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 and sisters.”