Hi Honey! Please Don't Come Home!

From the moment we're born, we're self-centered, and yes, I mean from the very moment we are born. I was listening to the radio Tuesday, and I heard that a university recently conducted a study proving that newborns cry out for the manipulation of others around them just days after they are born. Although I've never doubted it before, now I have clinical proof -- I'm self-centered. If you're reading this, you're likely human -- and if you're not, you're a spam bot and need to get off my blog -- so you're self-centered too. That's right. It's all about me. Not really surprising how that became a literal fashion statement.

Fighting against self-centeredness is necessary, and when I say "fighting," I really do mean fighting -- sometimes resisting the urge to please only yourself to live only for yourself can be physically exhausting. Many people I know try -- and with God's help -- we manage to make a reasonable attempt at banishing our self-centeredness, but it's amazing how self-centeredness can creep back into our lives in such little ways.

Basic Training Graduation - Yay!

Like for instance, the phrase, "I wish you would come home."

And that, my friends, is a phrase I  use quite a bit. For those of you who don't know, my husband graduated Basic Training in March (yay!) and is now at Ft. Benning, GA at Officer Candidate School. This means that I get semi-regular and semi-frequent phone calls from him. Near the beginning of those phone calls, I almost always say, "I love you. I miss you. I wish you would come home."

Yep, I'm a jerk.

Here's why. When I tell my husband that I wish he would come home, I am speaking from my own emotions, desires, and needs. I wish he were here with me -- not following his calling, not doing something far greater than both of us combined. It's like I'm saying:

 "Yes, dear, I know God called you to do this, and I know people need your help, but don't you think you should, you know, give all that up and come home and hang out with me? Because, after all, it's all about me. I mean, even you should be all about me, right?"

 
 By saying, "I wish you would come home," I also create tension. I realized this when he responded, "It's not up to me." I wasn't trying to be self-centered. I was trying to show him how much I love him. What I did, though, was make him feel a tension between what he was called to do and the desires of someone he loves.

So, Aaron, I don't want you to come home. My self-centered nature might wish you were here to interact with, to talk with more regularly, to spend time with our daughter, and to make the day-to-day to do a little easier, but I don't want you to come home. I want you to follow the calling on your life, and to be able to focus on that calling. Not only am I proud of you, but I'm thankful for the chance to learn again to put myself aside for something bigger than you, me, everybody -- yes, even you spambots!