When you first quit drinking you will find it hard to make sense of things. I’m sorry to say, but even after years of sobriety, you may still find it difficult. How easily the order of priority can get mixed up, tossed about and sorted into the wrong slots. Things start to go awry. Or rather, I myself begin to go awry. Life will always go awry, whether I like it or not, but with the right order of things, I can deal better when there is a solid grip at the top to hang onto. Life’s problems become simplified when the order of priorities remains tidy and well-kept. Coupled tightly to that order is one all-important maxim, that helps keep the order in place: That maxim is this: "my life is not about me." For anyone in recovery from any kind of addiction there is a mandate to turn away from yourself and start focusing on others.

There are certain maxims or sayings that I've tucked away to help me in life and this is one of those key phrases. When my life is about me, I tend to isolate. If I'm isolating, then I know I'm going in the wrong direction. For much of my life I pushed all my energy into goals and achievements, which are not bad in themselves. But they were the highest thing, and there's the problem. 

I've heard a sermon from Timothy Keller suggest that you need to approach life in "servant mode," as Jesus served us. He didn’t have to…but he did. He could do whatever he wanted…but he didn’t! Servant mode is a two word magical phrase, because when kids or spouse or co-workers ask for something, if you utter in your mind that magic phrase ("servant mode") it’s much easier to respond cheerily - especially when you don't feel like responding cheerily. This works, and of course when I don't do it then I grumble and complain and wish to be left alone. There's that never-ending notion to isolate clawing back to the surface, and I need to kick that crawling beast back into the pit about five times a day.

When I quit drinking, my sponsor said to just say “yes” if someone needs a volunteer. If someone needs help with something, like helping at an event or unclogging a toilet, just do it. These are "service opportunities." Just say yes. When someone I know sees me at a volunteer event, they say, “How did you get roped into this?” I tell people about saying yes to “service opportunities.” They usually laugh, and ask, “How’s that working out for you?”

When I tell them that it’s working out very well, better than I ever expected, they probably think I’ve fell off my bike and hit my head.

Just like "servant mode," this idea of “service opportunity” is another solid two-word reminder of "my life is not about me."

The miracle of Christian faith to me is that it takes away the need for self. The world is obsessed with self and most of us fall into that trap. Watching advertisements during the Olympics this year I noticed that every single ad is selling a vision of self to the viewers/buyers. The hallmarks of “goodness” in modern culture is getting what you want in one of four areas: possessions, pleasure, honor, or power. Those categories can be expanded into subcategories, and those into further subcategories and corners where the varieties of vanity and lust and envy live, but those four major categories sum up the teaching of our modern world, as we have been bashed over the head with ads and messaging since leaving the womb. There is this endless TV and internet testimony about how intrinsically good we are and whatever we want to do is justified, and that we deserve to get everything we want in life…and then, then happiness will settle upon us like a butterfly.

There’s little chance we will see an ad mentioning that we are flawed individuals and that getting what we want is usually the cause of our unhappiness. We want what we don’t need, then when we get our precious want, in a very short time we want something else. Something new, something shinier. Or, the opposite happens: we don’t get what we want, and then we love to play victim and cry the blues instead of moving on. Either way, the self is the master that we serve. We are justified in whatever we want - self-justified.

There's this great surprise answer that Jesus gives to the big questions of life. The saying “my life is not about me” basically liberates anyone who can come to believe it. However, it’s almost impossible to believe that idea of selflessness without getting our approval from somewhere. This approval that we seek, we have to get it from somewhere or we can never feel whole, and it needs to be a sign of approval that exceeds those which can come from a car dealership or house or trophy or diet or online community or drunken orgy.

No one really wants to hear that they are a sinner. It’s a dirty word today, but I suspect it always has been so, because it disrupts our nature. I can’t imagine the wall the Apostles were up against in pagan Rome telling people to repent of their sins. I suspect they asked, “Repent from our what?” The instinct is to want and war and win our way to some version of success. To let go of that way of life, to leave that headspace, well, that is to embrace imperfection. The idea of “you are perfect the way you are” is fine if it helps me accept my flaws, my limits, but not when it is an enabler of my bad choices and elevates me into an object of perfection that needs no reform.

As I say often in these articles: Surrender to win. This is the only kind of surrender that wins this battle and ultimately the war.

I'm flawed, I know it. But I really want forgiveness and approval. This is quite a dilemma. It's a kind of approval that the world can never give. I've searched for it. Aren't I just a sinner, a slow-learning rebel running from God so much of the time? Is there any kind of redemption for me?

And Jesus answers both questions, "Yes." 

Then suddenly there is no higher approval needed.

Once you have certainty that the flaws are real but you are still (somehow) saved, that God himself in human form died for your flaws, the need for outside honor diminishes, and can even disappear entirely. I think of the “woman at the well” who is angry but then joyful once she is liberated, internally “cleansed” once she is accepted. Jesus tells her she is saved and she’s over the moon. (The Chosen really nailed this scene and feeling.) This is the oxymoron: I’m not ok…but I’m saved! I know that atheists roll their eyes at that kind of language, of being saved (with an exclamation point!), but there’s no other way to say the truth of what happens on conversion. For those who say, “I’ll try anything once,” try faith. I avoided it for so long because it means admitting surrender of the ego, but that’s what I was really looking for all along.

No accomplishment or possession or knowledge can ever give that peace to you that the woman at the well discovers. No amount of accolades or botox will deliver that prize. What’s funny is that giving up the self is so hard, because even when you do, pride and self will emerge again like bacteria growing from the edges of your soul. Maintaining that peace requires a constant cleansing to keep the bacteria from overtaking the whole soul in a short time. In fact, as so often observed by non-believers, the righteous often have lost their sense of humility. This is what the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector points out.

The praying Pharisee is full of himself for being righteous and therefore has his ego propped up as a mini-god. “How glad am I to be unlike that publican slimeball over there! I keep all the rules.” He’s worshipping himself! The Tax Collector (or publican), knows what a mess his life is, has total humility, and says a more sincere prayer than the holy man. His is the true change of heart and is therefore shown mercy. Clearly the publican’s prayer must be sincere or he is no better off than the self-righteous one. Humility before God cannot be faked. Imagine this same parable today with a Christian and a meth head, or a transgender. Those who ask, seek, and knock to God with humility are never turned away. The Gospels are riddled with examples of this - but it’s important to realize that those on the margins are not invited into Jesus’ saving grace because they are on the margins or social outcasts, they find him through grace and humility and he affirms it. He never says to them, “The Tax Collector received mercy, and then we went back to stiffing clients and committing the same sins.” No, he’s not validating ways of living. Instead he’s showing the way, the path to the light, which is not just through the law and rule but through humility of heart and orientation away from the self.

The whole point of religion is not buildings or politics or morality contests. It’s humility before God. Many Christians know this, but some get on the news when they forget about it and make themselves the center, and the world loves to stone a person virtually today. But the second point of religion, at least the Christian faith, is that no sin cannot be forgiven. Said in a positive way, all sins can be forgiven. The Church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum of saints. And that’s what the non-believers don’t understand. They think someone who claims the title Christian must never sin. They love to see them fall. We love to watch the righteous trip and fall on their face in public. Scapegoats are somehow fun for humans to blame for problems (unless you are the scapegoat, like Steve Bartman was in Chicago when he touched the foul ball that Moises Alou was trying to catch). But all Christians fall on their face, all the time, just as non-Christians do. That’s why we have to go back to the hospital all the time.

The self puffs us up with pride. The minute we turn toward our self as king or queen, we begin to puff up. I think my favorite metaphor in the Bible is the “puffing” of bread, as the Jews in the Old Testament have the Feast of Unleavened Bread after Passover. When we are “puffed up” we are full of ourselves. We think we are more important than God. I can almost feel this happen when I start to focus on myself instead of God, when my orientation turns away from trust in God into fear for myself and my desires. Almost as if I’m holding my breath, I feel that rising anxiety in my neck, like a loaf in the oven filling up the pan. When I re-orient back to God, with trust instead of fear, the puff and rising anxiety fades. That is the radical trust I need to remove fear and greed, the two things that I feel most plague of our world today.

So humility is the goal, and it’s much harder than it sounds. I’ve linked to this before, but there are 17 signs that you lack humility from St. Josemaria Escriva. I am failing. The humblebrag is on there. Even in writing this blog I feel there is a horrifying flavor of humblebrag all over it and the only thing that keeps me from deleting every single post is that I’m hoping someone who wants to quit drinking might stumble upon it and find a positive nudge in these words. I would add one more type of humility fail to St. Josemaria Escriva’s list, one that is much shorter and maybe easier to remember. I am the Interrupting Cow. The Interrupting Cow is a knock-knock joke that goes like this:

Me: Knock Knock.

Other person: Who’s there?

Me: Interrupting cow.

Other person: Interrupting Cow wh…?

Me: MOO!

When someone is talking and I am just waiting to talk, or I’m nodding and saying, “Yes, yes,” and I want them to just hurry up and hand over the conch for my turn to blow on it: “Hear ye, I have a personal anecdote that relates to your anecdote but mine is better because it’s about me!” At that point I’m already puffed up and pouring out of the pan.

So it’s one thing to say “my life is not about me” and another thing to take action and succeed in living that maxim. But I do know there are three things, only three, that need to be in a loopback mechanism to pop the puff before my head gets too large.

Three rules to live by (from Word on Fire), plus one extra I added:

* Faith: Christ must be the unwavering center of my life.

* Hope: Remember I am a sinner who needs saving.

* Charity: My life is not about me.

Add these addendums:

See Christ in others instead of their faults.

Stop seeking approval.

Agitated by something? Then the addiction to self is returning. Turn off the computer or phone. Return to step 1.

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