I don’t know about you, but I so often find myself obsessing over the small things in life – things that have no true impact or meaning in our lives. And yet I still focus on them like a laser beam with my determination un-thwarted by any external influences. This blog is a personal confession. I pray that someday when my children read this, they will be able to learn from their father’s mistakes and not repeat them.

There have been countless times in my life and certainly many times in our marriage when I’ve obsessed about something that is seemingly insignificant. Melissa calls it “freight training” – that laser sharp focus that we men can get when we expend so much energy into doing a certain task, or achieving a certain end result that we desire.  It is our strength as men to be able to see things through and never give up even when there seems to be no answer or solution. We can persevere in difficulty – affording our families protection, security, and peace as we take the brunt of the stress or “grunt” work and filter it down so our wives and children can be at ease. I love my job as a husband and father. I don’t regret it for a minute! God designed man’s heart to be strong and courageous to stand in the gap and be there for his family at all costs.

What I describe above is the strength of our personality – but to every strength there is a weakness embedded deep inside. That weakness becomes evident when we allow our selfish nature to take control. You see, from an early age I exhibited signs of discontentment with nearly every “thing” I had or was given. I would obsess about a new toy for a few days and then it would be thrown in the corner and forgotten as I sought out a new toy. This pattern followed me into adulthood as I would end up owning owing on more than 15 vehicles from age 16-28. That doesn’t even scratch the surface of all the gadgets and gizmos and “toys” that I have purchased for myself.

It wasn’t until a good year into our marriage that God began the slow and painful process of breaking this weakness (dare I say, addiction) from me.  Without the power of the Holy Spirit in my life and the strong convictions of my wife, I wouldn’t be where I am today – a recovering “thing-obsessor” (I don’t believe that’s a real word, but this is my blog and for golly gee sakes I’m gonna make it a word ).

The story that this blog is centered on is only the most recent in a long history of selfish mistakes that I’m not proud of.  Just a couple of weeks ago I was happy and content with my cell phone. I was sure that my service provider was the best one out there. That was until I started to hear rumors of problems that people were having. They sounded like the same problems that had been annoyances that I had just looked past and ignored over the past few months.  I talked to more and more people who all preached that my service provider was not sufficient. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t blame anyone for my actions, I just took well  meaning advice and allowed it to become a seed of discontent in my heart. I began noticing all the small things. All the things that normally I would ignore and began to build a mental list of grievances against this company. “Surely we are being taken advantage of by this evil corporation!” I told myself over and over until I believed it. Then my folks who are on the same plan with us mentioned some problems they had been having with the service and I took that as the end of the world time to take action.

The laser beam activated and honed in on the management of our cell provider. I persisted in calling and complaining about the grievances I had with them (all of them valid and true although I did take every opportunity to explain how horrible it was when in reality, we were still able to use our phones for the most part and it didn’t affect our daily lives). I estimate that I spent about 5 hours on the phone over the course of a week or two trying to get them to let us out of our contracts so we could change to a provider who didn’t have the “problems” they did.  I wasn’t able to get my wishes fulfilled, but at the final conversation with an area manager, he hinted that he would be happy to give us a free upgraded phone. In that moment, all the good intentions of getting my family a better plan and fixing it all went down the tubes. Did I hear him say “free upgrade”? My ears tingled with excitement as I started dreaming of a shiny new phone that’s even better than my perfectly sufficient phone I had owned for 6 months. Well, enter the selfishness. I requested the free upgrade and he granted it. No sooner had I hung up that I was off to the store to get my free phone. I ended up getting a nicer phone and a nice gift card to the store I bought it from so not only was it “free”, but they paid me to get the phone! I was in hog heaven!

That was until my darling wife called me out on the carpet about it. (She has a wonderful way of seeing right through the veils I try to put up to hide my selfishness… thank God she can!) We had a disagreement about it and I finally admitted that I was being selfish and had taken advantage of the situation for my own benefit. I repented after a lot of searching of my heart because I realized I had done the very thing that God had been setting me free from over the past 2 and a half years. The old flesh reared it’s head and I stepped aside.

In the end, I decided to keep the phone instead of taking it straight back to the store – it’s hard to turn down a very helpful amount of money on a gift card to the same store we shop for groceries at! Coming into this season and on the eve of having our first child, the money can sure help us out. And speaking to the truth of the problems I had been having, the new phone did indeed fix those problems but the motivation behind it was wrong from the beginning. I set out with good intentions but they very quickly turned into selfish motivation.

Why am I sharing this with you? Because I want to warn you who struggle with this as well as a clear warning for my son and future children. Don’t allow yourself to be controlled by the small things in this world. The only thing that is important in this life – the only things that you can take with you when you leave this earth is people. People are what is important. And how do you obtain and keep people around you? Be selfless, giving, honoring, a man or woman of honor, kind, and most important, a light that shines for Jesus. Only in our service to others will we find true happiness. Only in living life in Jesus together with other souls like my family and friends will we ever find true contentment.

Oh – the new phone I got? It’s great and all, but it’s already yesterday’s news to me. What I want now is to give my time and my energy and my laser beam focus to those who I hold most dear in my life.