| I felt the need to get out of my apartment today and get some thoughts down, out of my head, just to help me sort things out. Now that I’ve found a tiny table in the Frothy Monkey and I’m surrounded by studying college students and chatter, the smell of coffee mixing with sounds of laughter and images of hipsters dressed in plaid button downs and thick rimmed glasses, I have no idea where I wanted to start – or what I wanted to voice so badly.
I’ve heard folks say that the college years are the most selfish years of your life… mainly because everything in your life revolves around you. What school you’re going to go to, what you’re going to do with your life, what classes you’re going to take, who you’re going to hang out with, what you’re going to get involved in, or if you want to get involved with anything at all. What decisions are you going to make concerning how to live your life and conduct yourself, what kind of character do you want to be known for? Are you going to choose a job that you love versus a job that will give you financial security – are you going to be lucky enough to have a job that encompasses both? Who are you going to date? What kind of boyfriend or girlfriend are you going to be? Who are you going to live with and where? Are you going to go out on Friday night or stay in because you’re exhausted – are you going to admit that lame, but very real, excuse to your friends?
In college, you get up whenever you want to – because going to class isn’t something your parents can make you do anymore (unless of course, they’re paying for your education – then they might have a little more authority over the matter). You eat whatever you want – in fact, you can have dessert first and choose to skip your vegetables entirely (until you realize that that’s how you gain 15 pounds your freshman year). You can hang out with whoever you want; do whatever you want, with no one over your shoulder hounding you about the consequences. In fact, you’ll hate coming home by the end of your freshmen year because you aren’t used to parents suddenly enforcing a curfew on nightly activities. After all, you’ve been going to bed at 3am all semester and consider yourself pretty mature and responsible, so who are they to impose rules on you now? You’re in college.
Some of that sound familiar?
I’ll be honest: I never really hated coming home in college. As long as my parents were supporting me financially, I never had the guts or stupidity to tell them that I was an adult and they couldn’t give me direction on how to run my life. On the contrary, I liked the dependency that came with not having to graduate in a lot of debt – and I understood that if I had the nerve to say that to Momma Corley I would be looking for a part time job and taking out some student loans. I’d also be riding a bike everywhere – one that I would have to purchase on my own. Why? Because nearly everything I “owned” wasn’t mine at all, but my parents. I’d be left with a few clothes and things I’d purchased with my own money, but my car wasn’t going to be one of them.
Thinking over the past 6 months of being a college graduate and transitioning into this period of adulthood, I’ve seen many interesting things and learned (or have had my thick skull been shown repeatedly) many lessons. Some fun, some funny – others hard and challenging. I’ll just elaborate on two for now: 1. Selfishness and 2. Ownership.
Selfishness.
College was NOT the most selfish time of my life. I’ve never felt more selfish than I do now. Now I have more free time than I know what to do with, and there’s nothing easier than wasting it entirely on myself. Now I just have one roommate instead of three, which makes it two less people to consider with my living habits on a daily basis. Now I have a job with a steady income, which means it’s so much easier to spend money on random impulses than it’s ever been before – because I have it to spend. Now I have a lot of alone time because I have such a random, abnormal schedule – which means I can be as quite or as loud, as clean or as messy, as active or as lazy, as my selfish little heart desires. There are days when I don’t even have to leave my apartment at all. There’s plenty of time to spend thinking about me. And can I just be the first to admit that I’ve done all of those things – all of those easy, selfish things. To the point where I’m so self-absorbed it hurts. And it’s difficult to go through an entire conversation actually listening and investing in another person because I’m so consumed with me – What am I going to say next? What impression do they have of me? Me. Me. Me.
I’m so exhausted by myself.
I think there are obvious reasons why Jesus placed an emphasis on serving and giving our lives away. Among those is the fact that service and generosity help meet the needs of those who need provision. However, there’s a level of distrust in my heart when I think about Jesus telling me to lay my life down. I want to cling to it. Now I’m beginning to understand what He meant when He said that those who try to save their life will lose it, but those who lose their life for Him will save it. Selfishness destroys. It destroys intimacy and fellowship, wrecks relationships and finances, and leads to self-pity and loneliness. But a life that is spent considering others as better than themselves, loving and pouring into folks, listening to and learning from others leads to a level of freedom that you can’t understand until you trust Jesus with your life, wasting it daily in obedience, believing that He is indeed able to guard what you’ve entrusted to Him until the last day.
Which will lead me to lesson 2 in a bit, but first – here are a few ways to break that pattern of selfishness:
1. Get involved. God has wired you with passions and talents for a reason. If you feel burdened over the sex-trafficking happening in our society today, get involved. If homelessness weighs heavy on your heart, get involved. If orphan and widow ministry can’t escape your thoughts, get involved. From loving on kids in the nursery on Sunday mornings to living in an orphanage for a year – there are areas for you to serve in, in ways that God has already wired you for. 2. Listen more. Often we talk to each other and don’t even listen. We might hear them, but we don’t often understand what they’re trying to communicate. I remember one of the first people I met in Nashville was named Trey Wince. We were at a bible study and we were paired up to talk about what God was doing in our lives. Trey said, “Let’s play the listening game. So one of us will talk, and then the other will repeat back what we heard, so we end up on the same page.” So he would talk, and then I would go, “So what I heard was…” This kind of “therapeutic communication” is used daily in my job as a nurse, but very little in my personal relationships. It doesn’t have to be that awkward or formal, but reiterating what the person said in a conversation can make them feel valued and heard- and you have to concentrate more on what they’re saying as opposed to what your response is going to be.
Now onto lesson 2:
Ownership.
I find that the same rebellious attitude we tend to have with our parents as adolescents is evident in our relationship with God Almighty for the majority of lives. I understood very early on that as long as my Dad was paying for things that I enjoyed and supporting me financially, he had the authority. I understood that the privilege of driving a car that he financially afforded and maintained for me meant that I had to respect my end of the deal and keep my grades up. I understood that him meeting what my scholarships didn’t cover for school meant that I’d better go to class because I knew I couldn’t afford tuition on my own. And even though it was incredibly irritating to hear “What time are you going to be home?” the summer after my freshman year, I quickly realized that throwing the “I’m an adult and I can do whatever I want” card was NOT the answer to anything but “Do you really want me to let you experience complete independence young lady?”
Why?
Because my parents owned just about everything I valued.
So why is it that I feared my parents more than I fear the Living God when it comes to my finances and possessions? With my time and my life? When everything I have, He owns. When even the breath in my lungs is on loan from Him – because I have been bought with a price. I am not my own. I can cheerfully part with 10% of my income in obedience, but when he calls me to give more how begrudgingly do I respond to Him? How quickly do I recognize that HE OWNS IT ALL, so if He wanted 90% and gave me 10% to live on it would be a gracious plenty?
Again, I think there are obvious reasons why Jesus calls us to give and tithe. In the Old Testament, the tithe provided provision for the priests of God’s house. In the New Testament, people didn’t just give 10% - they gave all they had to share with one another, and not one of the members of the early church lived in need. In fact, Jesus was more pleased with a widow who gave all that she had than He was with the buckets of money given by the rich, because (I think) He’s more concerned with our level of dependency on Him than He is on breaking the bank. He doesn’t need our tithe – He’s the one that meets all of our needs according to His glorious riches in Jesus. So why call us to give? Because (again, I think) He’s after our heart, after our affection, and after trust.
Jesus is well aware that if we don’t recognize that He’s the owner of everything and act accordingly to His lead, our possessions will soon possess us. That which we think we own will soon own us. That car that we wanted so badly will now have us tied down to a monthly payment we can’t afford and insurance that has to cover it. That smartphone now comes with a $30 chunk of change we must pay every month just to have the chance to “stay connected.” That stock we just had to invest in will keep us up at night when it starts to go down, and steal our sleep when it starts to go up, because we’ll always be concerned about gaining and losing money, and when the “right time” to sell will be. That house that we thought we could stretch our budget to fit, will now chain us to a mortgage we cannot afford and repairs that will have us signing up for overtime shifts just to foot the bill. Jesus understood that that’s not freedom at all.
This lesson is perhaps the one that has wrecked me the most because there are so many implications, implications that cover more than finances but all include stewardship. At the root of the wreckage is this one question, “What does it look like to invest in what will last with wisdom while I’m here on earth?” Do I really want to sink a lot of money into a house that won’t last? Do I really want to sink money into being burdened by the convenience of being constantly connected? When all of it could go into something that will last.
Hear me quite clearly: this is not saying that having nice things is a bad thing, nor does it mean that having an iPhone means you have an issue with ownership. It really has nothing to do with the stuff you have, but everything to do with your heart. Furthermore: This post is not saying that I’ve got these things figured out. It’s simply saying that these are the things that I’ve been pondering lately – issues that are hitting up my heart. Issues that have led me to take Jesus at His word and as for wisdom – trusting that He gives it freely to those who recognize that they lack it. I do NOT have it all together.
If you made it this far into the post and actually read it, you get total props. As always, there is a welcome to leave your thoughts and wisdom here. I want to learn, even in the most unconventional places, from the most unexpected sources.
Loving you all the way from my corner of the café, <3 a | 
