Me, myself and I?

I've been married for nearly three and a half years and I am now a Father - which is all very cool. Call me a bit slow but with all the stuff that is going on in my life right now it is causing me to re-evaluate what life is all about - especially concerning me.

Just after I got married I got a bit of a culture shock. Perhaps I am not all there but after the honeymooning of marriage went it started to sink in that my life was no longer just my own any more. I was in fact part of a team now - and I had committed to that team for the rest of my life. Any decision I made, any money I spent, anything big I wanted to do in my life wasn't just my decision any more. And that scared me a touch. So now I have a child! And again, it hit me today that I now share everything I do with two people now. I can't just swan off and please myself - there are other lives at stake now.

As a Christian, this kind of living is not that unfamiliar to me. Jesus Himself instructed us to 'take up our cross and follow Him' - or in the Message translation:

"Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You're not in the driver's seat—I am."

This is from Luke 9 and just stirs something within me. Often we'll spend our entire lives trying to make things happen, be a certain person, do a certain thing - but God simply tells us to forget about that for one moment, fix our attention on Him and He'll sort us out. I love wisdom like this - the complete opposite to what the world would say, but just crazy enough to work :).

Funnily enough I think I used to be better at putting other things in front of my own desires even before I was married. Perhaps I just got slack in my old age. But there are a few things I am very sure of. Firstly, God knows and God sees more than I ever will and I want to let Him do the leading; Second, I am seriously blessed with my wife and son; And thirdly, perhaps I need a gentle reminder that I am not the centre of my world - and if I was, it would be a pretty messed up one at that.