Wednesday, December 10, 2008

pushing my buttons

i'm not sure how to blog on this today but i want to. I'm experiencing giving fatigue today. I'm tired of serving people today.

This obviously has me quite conflicted considering that's what discipleship 101 is all about. It's not that i don't see how Christ has given himself for me. i do. I'm just feeling like there is a pattern emerging in my life. Simply put its that i am somehow responsible to serve everyone around me... and that's it.

Monday evening Shiloh got sick again, so we decided to let everyone sleep in on tuesday. At our house that means 8 o clock. so we got Abi up and ready for school. while she was getting ready i went outside to dig out the cars.

Now my 1976 snow blower had recently come back from the shop but it was buried behind the vehicles. So i started shoveling the end of the drive so i wouldn't get stuck pulling the cars out. My plan was then to take the snow blower and if it worked (it hasn't been all that faithful) and clear the driveway.

Abi was already late for school and i had an appointment at 10. so while i cleared the end of the drive i made meaningless conversation with my neighbour's sister who was clearing their driveway too.

I got the cars out and Abi still wasn't outside so i started the snow blower. It started! i took it for a pass. the snow must have been heavy (or my snow blower sucks) cause it would only throw the snow about 2 feet beside the blower.

It became clear to me that i wasn't going to get the driveway done before i had to get Abi to school and get to my appointment.

So i got abi put her into the van which was now parked on the street, pulled up beside my neighbour who was still shoveling.

i explained that i had an appointment at 10 but that after that i was coming back to finish my driveway, and that if she didn't have anywhere to go she could leave the rest of her driveway and i would finish it when i finished mine...

she said, "I'll do it myself... It's a little late"

i know there is a much larger story behind the look on her face, and her words and very little of it if any at all has anything to do with me at all but that doesn't mean it didn't sting.

truth is i have been seeing that attitude a lot lately. It's the attitude that says, "you exist to serve me and you're not doing a very good job doing it lately".

There's something about entitlement that ruins benevolence.

the worst part of all this is that the more i think about it the more it brings to the surface my own feelings of entitlement.

and i'm not sure i'm comfortable with the idea that if you don't expect anything from people they won't disappoint you.

it's tricky stuff.

I see all of these kinds of things eroding my faith. Not capital F faith. just lower case f faith. I know whom i have believed, but all this stuff has me wrestling with motives lately. It says everything that does not come from faith is sin.

but i serve people out of expectation all the time. but i tell you. some days i want do what i want to do and not do what i don't want to do.

i can see that's a dangerous road.

i guess what all this means is that i'm still too influenced by the expectations of people.

so that's why i'm journalling here today. trying to quiet the voices that pull at my life till there is only one.

2 comments:

Darryl said...

what a pity party that was.

Unknown said...

I know exactly what you mean here. Been wrestling it out too. I read this blogpost (link below) and it keeps coming to mind whenever my mind/heart heads in that direction again... and again... I'm new at linking. Hopefully this'll work:

http://intent.squarespace.com/brush-strokes/2008/11/27/on-this-thanksgiving-day.html