Some lessons I need to relearn

The other day, I was at a car wash to support one of my daughter’s clubs.  Many of the students wore shirts that said, “Service Before Self”.  It was a powerful message that caught me off guard because I am very fearful that my daughter might learn this message, as I did, in the wrong way.

From my perspective, this is a lesson I learned, without intending to.  I always put everything before myself.  I served, but in vain.  I put my parents, and what I feared about what they thought about what I might do, before myself and the things that I wanted to do.  I put my children, and what I wanted for them, before the things that I wanted to do.  I put my husband ahead of myself.  I served everyone and everything and I completely neglected to serve myself.  If we don’t tell our children the complete story, if we don’t give them lessons of promise, then we allow them to interpret for themselves…and it doesn’t always turn out the way we’d hope.

Somehow, the message that I should accept others meant that I should accept them as they were and as they acted, regardless of how I felt.  Somehow, I got the message all wrong.  It is not “Service before Self” but rather “Self in Service”.

Once I know myself, once I can stand up for and support myself, then I can ask, “How may I serve?”  But it is my known and cared for self that it doing the serving.  It is my honored self that is fulfilling what it is called to do. It is my humble self that seeks to aid and lend compassion to others, through who I am and the work that my best self can do.  It is not my scared, weak and belittled self who serves other, or myself, well.

I want my daughter and her peers, her friends, to identify who they are, to live their best lives, to share their best selves in service to the world.  What a wonderful ideal!  To live in service, but not to neglect or belittle yourself in the process.  Now that is a lesson I need to relearn!