A few months ago, I lightly blogged about how we humans are built to seek affirmation. In my post, I admitted to chasing validation, and blew it off as simply admitting to being normal.
But after some time to think, I'm not sure I agree.
See, when I wrote before that we should seek the approval of Christ before we go after the acceptance of our peers, I forgot how difficult it is to find balance between the two. I wrote about motivations, and how I'm basically geared to chase after happiness and friends and other things which will fade once this life is over.
Don't those two things strongly contradict one another? I look through my Facebook feed and see how I constantly drag out my greatest accomplishments for applause, and yet rarely speak of my walk with Christ and the things HE takes pride in.
I think that, more than anything else, shows where my attention is focused.
I'm not one to plaster my social networking accounts with verses, pictures of crosses and happy little Christian-ese memes, and I'm not about to make that jump. And I'm not going to shut it down and publicly "fast" from Facebook so everyone knows what I'm up to.
At the same time, I'm not about to cast away all the attention I give to the people around me. Conversations I've had with a few close persons have told me that people — loving people, caring for people, being interested in people, read my last post on Tea and Crumpets, etc. — is a calling of mine. Perhaps that is why I struggle with finding a middle ground, simply because God has given me a heart to connect and I haven't yet learned how to control it.
With all of those disclaimers out of the way, my thoughts are thus:
The reason I've gotten to where I am in my career is because I take pride in what I do. I spend my spare time at the office writing or working on the next section (when I'm not watching Netflix, shhhh) and because of the investment, I've seen a significant return.
I need to take pride in my walk with Christ. If I didn't spend any time singing, I wouldn't improve my sight reading or ear training. And because I don't spend time working on my relationship with the Lord, it suffers.
I haven't worked out exactly how to go about that, but I'll write about it in the near future. There are plenty of things I need to work out with my keyboard: what to do with church-time, wondering what mission God has for me, how to act out said mission, my contempt for Christians and what "pride" means to me.
For now, I'll stop worrying about chasing worldly acceptance and look after other needed areas.
Except coffee. I can still chase that.
