Last January, I heard this message on the Christian XM station which asked, “Do you pursue happiness or do you create it?”Â
What it was really asking was, do you pursue your own happiness or do you create happiness in the lives of others?
Thinking about that question is what made me finally quit just talking about volunteering and actually FIND a program to participate in. Which is how I ended up with Reading Partners.Â
But the feeling has been nagging at me again recently. Despite my health, more and more I feel like God has blessed me beyond belief and I can’t help but wonder if I’m being a bad steward of it all.Â
I try not to be, but I can still be a really selfish person and very focused on my own needs and wants. Especially when I’m not feeling 100% physically.
And, of course, I am also super lazy.Â
So that’s a bad combination.Â
I’ve never gone hungry, always felt safe
I got some money in my pocket, shoes on my feet
In my own little world, population: me
I think as I’ve gotten older it has actually become easier to tune out the rest of the world. The only reason I can’t check out completely is because I live in a city so I am surrounded by uncomfortable situations. I kind of don’t want to know myself if I can ever walk by another human being living on the street without at least feeling like I should do something. Even if I don’t know what exactly that is.
Still though, I do a pretty good job of ignoring things that I don’t want to think about. Which is one of the reasons I don’t talk about politics anymore. I still follow a few political blogs (although with much less frequency) and I still read a disgusting amount of news for work, but I don’t really let myself think about it too much because I get upset. And I spend enough time being upset over my own life now, I don’t have the energy to be upset about other things even if they are important and impactful.
I go through the motions of caring, I give a dollar or two, I make donations to charity, I tithe (on the rare occassions we actually make it to church), but as I mentioned in my new year post, it feels…cheap.
Maybe I shouldn’t feel that way? Obviously I know money is important, I spend my entire day at work thinking about it…
But I can’t help but think just giving money is the easy way out and that I should be doing more. And anyway, I’ve never given what I couldn’t afford. Or given something that was truly a sacrifice for myself.
The giving has never been hard. And not because I’m such a generous and altruistic person, but because I’ve just never given that much. All the money we donate in a year adds up to a fraction of what we spend on ourselves. It doesn’t help that Paul is a true LA boy and likes the finer things in life (like the $5k watch he is eyeing even though we’re cash poor, house rich right now). And the 45 measly minutes a week that I spend at Reading Partners doesn’t exactly make me feel like I’m going to be winning Volunteer of the Year anytime soon.
I throw a twenty in the plate but I never give til it hurts
And I turn off the news when I don’t like what I see
Yeah, it’s easy to do when it’s population: me
Christmastime always seems to be the impetus for me questioning the meaning of MY life. And whether or not it is what it should be. Unfortunately, the answer has always been no.
What if I’m missing out?
What if there’s a greater purpose I could be living right now?
Outside my own little world
I feel like maybe God is calling me to do something that requires an actual commitment. There are several possibilities in my head as to what this could be, a few different things that have been tugging on my heart. They don’t all require the same amount of time and effort, but they’d all require a lot more of me than what I’m giving right now.
I saw a cardboard sign that said “Help this homeless widow”
Just above that sign was the face of a human
I thought to myself, “God, what have I been doing?”
There is one idea that I find particularly intriguing. But I’m also not sure how realistic it is for me to undertake something that big or whether or not something like what I have in mind actually already exists (although the quick Google searches I did would suggest that if something does exist it doesn’t have much of a presence). I don’t know though, I’m afraid if I start off too ambitious it will be that much easier to just give up when I run into my first roadblock.
Oh, how many times have I just passed her by?
I gave her some money then I drove on through
And my own little world reached population: two
Anyway, yesterday as I was driving to my first tutoring session for the semester, I heard another message. This time it was just two words.
Be inspired.
And then they played My Own Little World by Matthew West.
They were the two most perfect words to proceed this song.
Give me open hands and open doors
Put Your light in my eyes and let me see
That my own little world is not about me
I’m still not quite sure what I’m supposed to do. What will quiet this voice in my head?
(Or is that only something crazy people say?)
But I’m looking now, and I think God will point me in the right direction.
What if I’m missing out?
What if there’s a greater purpose that I could be living right now?
I don’t want to miss what matters
I wanna be reaching out
Show me the greater purpose
So I can start living right now
Outside my own little world
My own little world