Examining Selfishness

"I am his because he appreciates perfection!" That line is printed on one of my favorite T-shirts. My husband I have been into teasing each other on the area of selfishness. For instance, one morning he heard my cellphone beeping its low battery notice. It beeps every 5 minutes when the battery needs to be recharged. The beeps really get annoying... they definitely get on my hubby's nerves! So he lovingly asked me to give him my cellphone so he could plug it into the charger. And I said, "that's so nice and loving of you to do that for me." And then I said, "Oh, wait... you really didn't mean to show me some love now, you're actually doing it for yourself because you were annoyed with the beeps!" And of course, we LOL! He says that a lot to me too. One thing I like about our marriage is that we have learned to verbalize our thoughts and feelings for each other. On our first year of marriage, I used to assume that he knows what I think and feel and I was frustrated. Women, Asian specially, have that attitude of making their husbands guess what they think and feel. For me that's not fair. Husbands are humans and so they are definitely not omniscient. My husband loves it when I tell him what I think and feel instead of pouting to cue him that something's not right.

Okay, going back to that line... when my husband saw that for the first time, he said, "oh, thanks honey! Oh, wait... that line actually praises yourself more than it praises me!" So there you go! It's a "got ya" line!

Forgiveness

I blogged about this girl who sent me nasty text messages in my cellphone a couple months ago... here and here.

Well, I asked her to tell me what I did to upset her a lot of times. She refused. She wasn't being fair to me. She even got to the point of being verbally abusive in her text messages. My only demand was for her to spell my offense out. She sent me a thousand scathing words but never told me what I did wrong. My carnal desire was revenge. Kind of you-hurt-me-i-will-hurt-you thing. But in my heart of heart, I knew it was not right. I prayed and God changed the attitude in my heart. A compassion for her has started to fill me. I felt sorry that she was being eaten up by her bitterness. I know how it is to be filled with bitterness. I prayed for her. Her next hurtful text messages didn't hurt anymore after the prayer. I stopped demanding that she explains how I hurt her because I felt like it just made her angrier. I stopped demanding that she be fair with me... it was just not possible that time. God's message to me was clear, "I know you are offended and hurt, but I want you to show one more act of kindness." I did... I told her to give me one more chance. I asked her to forgive me of whatever I did wrong. But she refused. Well, I did what I needed to do and it was quite liberating.

Then, we met at a Christmas party. Oh, how uncomfortable that was to arrive at a party and see her. Well, I approached her and looked straight at her eyes. She got up from her chair, opened her arms and gave me a big hug... with her eyes starting to get wet with tears and said, "I'm sorry." I was touched. I think I just needed that... no more no less! No explanations needed. I forgave her!

Courage

I found that image in the internet and really liked it. It shows a lot of courage on the part of the cat to walk bravely in front of the dogs. Do you think the cat is scared? I think so. But being scared does not automatically make anyone incapacitated. To be scared doesn't disqualify a person to do great things. To be scared is even a prerequisite to be courageous. It's kind of like you have to experience to be scared before you need to be courageous.

I love the word courage. But my favorite definition of this word is "the determination to do right when pressured to do wrong." I also love the Biblical definition of it, which is "obeying God despite the risks or losses."