” Me First”

• Not The Only One!
• Post #169
• 26 Dec  24     
•                ” Me First ”
• Howdy!
• Welcome  back  once more. I don’t  know  if  this is how we are going to clear out or end 2024 together, but looking  back  over the year, it’s been  another  wild  ride . I’m not really  a resolution  kind of guy, and if you are, then  that’s just  fine. I  don’t  know why, but for some reason, I think that  it’s a little  criminal to not  reflect on what we have been  through  and all the places that God has shown up,  and just  been  down  right  faithful. Maybe that’s  it, if we don’t  then In someway we are being  ungrateful, and failing to  recognize  God’s goodness towards us. I’m not going to  park and dwell  on the not so good times, because  even  those, show God’s goodness  and  steady fast hand.  We often  will  be asking the wrong  questions, which  some how and in some ways adds to something that may not be the best of times. We will  often  lead with  why me ? or why now? , or why this. Asking  why negative  things  cross our paths and enter into  our lives, comes across  as us sitting  in the back seat  of a car, every  five minutes, asking  if we are there yet?☺️☺️. Maybe, just  maybe  we should be  asking the question of what am I  suppose to learn  or take away  from this particular  circumstance or situation.  Life is just a  series of  seasons, and  hopefully we are learning  along the way to help  us navigate the  next coming one, and having  something to share with  those who  just  may be a little  bit  behind  us in their  journey.  If nothing  else, we want to be able to  justify the  gray hair that we have earned along the way☺️☺️.
• Still  reflection can be a difficult  road to pass  back over again , especially  if  we  have  endured hard or tough  times.  Again, no one is screaming  and clamoring  at the top of their  lungs for hard times and suffering, it’s just  not who we are☺️. Looking  back  over this past year has left me  struggling with  a little  bit of a quandary/ dilemma, I’m not real  sure what  to call it or how to properly  frame it. The beauty of  being a weirdo, is being  able  to  say and do weird things and not being  questioned so much as to why you  do them.  People  just  chalk it up to You  being weird, and I’m good with  that ☺️☺️.  I will  sometimes take informal  surveys, by just  asking  one off questions.  They  aren’t  usually  tied to anything that We may currently  be talking about and I usually get  a less than  fifty percent  follow up  as to why I asked  that question, again, the beauty of  being  weird ☺️☺️. If I  could  sum up all of the different ways that I’ve inquired of others, I guess that it would  come down  to us judging  others by their  worst moments.  We all have them  in various  settings, whether it’s yelling at our kids, loosing it  with  our boss, or somehow  getting  sideways with  some other  relationship or untimely  and unwanted situation. I just  very  recently flew to Florida and  there is just  nothing quite like looking at the board and just  watching  all of the flights switched to delayed or canceled like  dominoes in a chain reaction….oh! Joy!….not so much!☺️ I was tired and cranky, and not a happy camper didn’t  even  begin to  tell the story.  I made it about  me, and only  me. All of the other travelers just  didn’t  matter, and as hard as the airline  employees were working  to come up with  solutions, it just  wasn’t  enough and it wasn’t  going  to  be  enough.  Have you ever been  there?
• No worries, God got a hold of me and my spoiled brat mentality and  gave  me an attitude adjustment.  It’s funny  how He can  do that, when  I’m  spiraling and  no one else can.☺️ So here we go! How about  it , do we judge  people  off of their  less than stellar moments? I was once * reprimanded in boot camp for paying  way to much attention in a weapons  class and had less than what you might  call enthusiasm for  first aid classes.  The lesson was simple, short and sweet.  It’s more important to  know  how to save a life , than it is to take a life. I want to  blame this on social media, but deep down, I know that  it’s a heart  issue and  that is how quickly we will burn a bridge, set it a blaze, and stand back  and watch  it  burn  with  some level  of  satisfaction….ouch! . I understand  toxic, and this is not that, at least  not from  my vantage  point, but people  just  refusing to  make an effort.  It’s like  the political season  all over again.  We disagree and I’m somehow  OK if your existence comes to a hurried, somehow  tragic end…..again ouch!
• I’m not a Kumbaya person, I haven’t  always been  a talk it out person, or hug it out guy, but I have  come to learn that wise  council has a place, and if you have a need to do that laying  on  a couch  with  a health  care professional, then by all means☺️. I’m by no means  trying  to over simplify or discount  anyone’s  pain, but I  will see people  sometimes  who complain about  being  alone, or having  no friends or  meaningful  relationships  in their lives, but they  are  just  absolutely abrasive as hell and think that everything  and everyone should  bend to their  needs, with absolutely  zero  compromise. Its about me first, and only me. . Ok, more irony, they throw around the  word * narcissist and  never, not once looking into  a mirror 🙄 ☺️. I’ve heard  this phrase, and not seen it employed  by the people  who use it most and it’s ” Ride or Die”. It mostly,   I believe that  is   a person who  has given  their  all to a situation, and they are  in it ,until there is no more life in whatever it was that they have dedicated themselves to. .  I think that  it’s another  one of those things that has been  redefined and  I  just  missed the  memo ☺️☺️. Maybe  dying  means like  when  you  were a kid and you messed  something  up and you said something  along the lines of, ” my parents are  going to  kill  me”. Well  it maybe exasperating at the time, but there was no pending  death or doom.
• Closely  related is the popular  trend or train of thought of self care. It’s me first to ensure that my mental  stability  stays in tact. We say this over and over again, never considering  that it’s selfish and  encourages us to stay stuck in whatever  we have  locked in our heads, which  is everything  besides  getting  better  and  learning to  deal with  a little  adversity. It’s that running  into  that proverbial  wall or hitting that glass ceiling and just  never being  able to  break through.  We get  to the wall countless times and  never consider that we are the constant and  that, just  maybe  it’s not everyone  else.  More alone time and I have  no friends ☺️☺️. I get and understand  fear. Fear is not always a bad thing.  We can  turn  it into a constant  bad thing, but fear can be one of the greatest  motivators. I will  go as far as to suggest that fear  can represent  a fork in the road. The cross section  street signs say to the left ” Same” the other side  says ” Success “. One is an easy down hill stroll the other an upward  climb with  obstacles.  One is familiar, comfortable and  easy to control.  The other side is scary with  many unknowns and  completely out of our control. One side represents a  break down  in understanding and  perseverance.  The other side  has break through  written all over it, but not easy and not always the  desired  outcome, but better and more resilient. In one of my weirdo  surveys, someone  suggested to  me , if we just  loved people  harder, then there would  be some level  of * reciprocation or something along the  lines of  it being a  mutual thing.  I have had a similar thought  process  myself  in  the past, but never hit pay dirt with it.  I want to say that it’s flawed  for a number  of reasons, but primarily  because  we can’t  control  other  people, hell  we can  barely  control  ourselves ☺️☺️.  Maybe  it’s one of those unicorn  things. People will  say that there is no such  thing as love at first sight and that prearrange  marriages  just  don’t  work. Well, without  going  down some elaborate rabbit  hole , I want to say that while  it hasn’t  necessarily  worked  out for me, there is that exception to the rule, and their love will  do all of the fighting  for them. And for the record, prearrange  marriages are highly  successful and  do much better than  when  we pick for ourselves, but that’s just  not our culture.  Also, I  am in the camp of love at first  sight and  have  experienced it at least  once in  my lifetime. ☺️
• This whole  thing about  self care, has me trying to  wrap mind around  truth  verses protection  mode. People’s  hurts and experiences  are real, and for many, that is all they  know. I’m not saying that  we  see boogeyman around  every  corner, but there is this tipping point  where we can become to others the thing  that we hate and wrestle against.  I think that  to many  times  the argument  of self care is synonymous with  selfishness  and acts an active  smoke screen to keep  us from  having  to grow and in some  cases to grow up😝☺️. I think  all to often our big takeaway or life lesson, is just  to not engage with  others. Relationships  are hard, messy and require  a lot of  rolling up the sleeves. I’ve been  close to hermit  mode on a few occasions, but I  know that it’s not supposed  to  be  that  way, and that it  goes against  God’s  design  for us.   The design  is to have  close interpersonal relationships with  one another, and with  Himself.  Bottom  line is  that  people  need US  and you need them, whether  we want to believe  and acknowledge that or not☺️☺️
• Earlier, I  said not social media, but a heart issue.  People have  so many*  misconstrued thoughts as to what love is. It’s not always  their  fault. You can’t  be expected to  reproduce  something that  you have  never encountered or experienced.  I think  more so  than anything  else  explains  the me first  mentality. People  often  think  of love as being  a 50/ 50 proposition and  if that is Your thought  process, you may  want to quit while  you are a head☺️☺️. If you aren’t  bringing  your all, your “A” game,  and everything   that you can  muster over a hundred  percent and your partner doing the  same, success  will  not usually  be on your side, just  the truth  that’s all. A little  more truth for you. You will  never be happy  in life, if your primary  goal  is  to  be  happy.  I know  a little  bit a a brain bender☺️☺️. The harder you chase , the more elusive  it becomes.  How about  one more just because  three is a magic number ☺️☺️. If your  love is emotional  based and tied up in how you feel, you are setting  yourself  up for a big disappointment. I  can  promise you that those feelings will  change, and sometimes  burn off like the  morning  fog.☺️☺️.
• Still here we are, and people  will  present something that stands as a slick argument.  They  say things  like, ” when someone  shows you who they  are…..believe them”. This is the same  argument of judging  people at what might not be their  best moments. I think that we like to judge harshly as it acts as a guard or  boundary.  It’s that thick wall that just  never crumbles.  Everyone  has heard, once a cheater, always  a cheater. That may  or may  not be  true, depending on the  individual.  There have  been  people  who have  made mistakes and  never repeated them  ever again  over their  entire  lifetime.  They became  aware of the pain and distrust that they brought  to the party. We usually are on thin ice anytime  we go with  ” Always ” and perhaps  ” Never”. It’s those absolutes that aren’t  usually  as iron clad as we would  like  for  them to be. ☺️☺️
• If there is one thing that I absolutely  know about the  me first crowd, is that it stands in stark contrast to the gospel message.  It’s not the Jesus  way. God has a real simple take on what love is , and it’s to devote yourself  to the well being of others , no matter their  response or the cost to yourself.  If you know of a way of doing that without  taking the posture of a servant and perhaps a little  suffering  along the way,  I would  really  love to hear from  you☺️☺️. I think  this  is another  place where fear plays a role. We get stuck in our boots , when  we consider  the cost or the possibility that the love will not be returned. Love, true love is costly and  can be messy at times.  We sometimes  fear if we love in that way of putting  others  first, no matter  the cost, that there will  not be much  of ourselves  left, when  it’s all said and done.  I absolutely  get  that loving  no matter the cost is extreme  bravery.  It’s right  up there with  firemen  running  into  a  burning  building to save someone.  Once we have  been  hurt  a time or dozen ☺️☺️, we find it really  hard  to  abandon  ourselves to  love. After all, we only  have  one heart, and how much  can  we expect  one heart to  endure? I like  simple analogies, even  if they  are difficult  or nearly  impossible to achieve, it gives us a goal or something  to shoot for. It’s this  , quitting  is easy and finishing is hard. Why do we get  that warm enjoyment of an old couple  holding hands in the park? It’s because we believe that  they  are finishers and  done all of the hard things to make it this far in life. We both  respect and admire  that.
• It’s not a magic pill or a silver bullet, but extremely  crucial and that is to allow God to  pour back into  us , what we have poured into  others.  If it’s courage, or hope , and especially love, God has an endless  supply.  The more generous that we are  with our  courage and  love, the more abundantly God can  resupply us, so we don’t  ever have  to  worry about  being  spent or out of stock  on the things that we need most in life.
• Perhaps I was a little  hard on the me first  crowd  today, so just  to level the  playing field just a little.  It reminds me of in second  Peter, three, when  it talks  about  a time coming when  people will  only  be lovers of themselves and  their  money. It’s an extensive list and it goes on about being  proud, boastful and  scoffers. it goes on to talk about being disobedient, ungrateful and  considering  nothing  sacred. It then doubles down  on being  unloving and unforgiving  and  lacking  self control.  Then it goes on to talk about being  cruel, hating what is good, betraying  friends, being  reckless , puffed up with  pride, and loving  pleasure over loving God. It could  be a very  accurate  snap shot of the” Me  first ”  crowd , but we need to be careful, not to become  that ourselves.  Who wants to be that guy? Well, we all have at some point been that guy, so let’s own it and  try not to be to confident when  pointing  fingers at the ” Me First ” people. And stay off that list!☺️☺️
• Till Next Time ✌️ Peace!
• Sandy The  Southerner

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