This Dying to Self Thing...

well, sometimes, frankly, it just sucks.

I'm sorry, but it does.

Now, I'm not going to write a long, whiny, complaining post. But last night, as DH and I had to push ourselves aside again and again to deal with one thing and another for three of the four children, I made that comment. We both had a little chuckle. He pointed out that "dying to self" by definition wasn't supposed to be fun. "Yeah, Jesus probably thought the same thing while he was hanging on the cross, don't ya think?" he said.

Reminded me of this quote from Fr. Pedro Arrupe:

"Conversion is not a giving away of something that we can well afford to
lose. It goes much deeper than that. It is a putting away of
something that we are: our old self with its all-too-human, all-too-worldly
prejudices, convictions, attitudes, values, ways of thinking and acting, habits
that have become so much a part of us that it is agony even to think of parting
with them, and yet which are precisely what prevent us from rightly interpreting
the signs of the times, from seeing life steadily and seeing it whole."

from A Jesuit Off Broadway by James Martin, p.185

Here's to "seeing life steadily and seeing it whole!"