Where do You Find Your Importance?

 

“John replied, “No one can receive anything unless it has been given to him from heaven.”  John 3:27

I have always struggled with an impulse, a desire for people pleasing. I want acceptance, I want to be liked. The things that have kept me up at night the most were when people didn’t like me. My daughter’s sisters’ adoptive parents didn’t like me. They hadn’t even met me, which didn’t comfort me at all. They decided that I was a bad person and their children couldn’t have anything to do with me or my family. For over a decade my daughter was disconnected from her sisters until, finally, they came of age where they could connect apart from their parents. I am so happy to report that today they enjoy an ever deepening relationship and they get to connect in person a couple of times a year, despite living on opposite sides of the country. Unfortunately though, I believe that being raised to believe that I was a bad person has poisoned them against me. I imagined joint summer vacations and the kids spending time in each others’ homes growing up. I imagined being like an aunt to those girls and having a part in their lives. Instead, we are in an awkward situation for my daughter, who loves me but also loves her sisters. Now there are generations of people who don’t like me, even though they’ve never met me. As a people pleaser, that nags at me for sure.

At it’s root though, I think this impulse for people pleasing is for importance. I want to believe that I am important, that I matter. If I hold value for people, they will want to keep me around. All my life I shifted between friend groups. Each year in school I identified with a different set of people. I didn’t leave school with a best friend, and to this day the people that I would call my friends change on a pretty regular basis. I had a close friend in elementary school that I stayed in contact with distantly through high school, but living in different cities with phone numbers that were long distance between each other meant that our relationship became more and more like and acquaintance. As a young adult I had a close friend who had children my kids’ ages and we were pregnant together a couple of times. For years, she was the first person I thought of or called when something important happened in my life. Today, I haven’t spoken to her in years. There was no falling out, we don’t have anything against each other. She moved on to a different church and our lives just fell out of each others’ circles. I see people like my middle son who have close friends that have been in their lives for almost as long as they can remember and I get a little jealous. I don’t have friends like that. What I have are a lot of good acquaintances. Outside of my husband, no one really, deeply knows me. No one, that is, but God. I’ve often wondered if my friend situation is really a gift from Him to keep me close. When I have a person in my life I am very close to, I tend to gravitate toward them instead of God. If I really sit back and think about it, maybe this means that I am important to God. He cares about me enough to orchestrate my life in such a way that my attention will be on Him.

Perhaps people pleasing, the quest for importance, is an unconscious attempt to earn my salvation. I always dreamt of doing “big things” for God. I read missionary biographies and imagined myself living lives like them. I imagined having ministries where everyone knew my name, like Beth Moore or Elizabeth Elliot. I’m ashamed to admit that there were times where I chafed at “just being a wife and mom.” Outside of my little family, no one really knew what I did or how much I tried to serve God. But God did, and really, that ‘s all that matters. That’s what I had to learn. My salvation is not based on anything I have done or will do, but on what Jesus did for me. While I was still his enemy, a sinner with no regard for Him, Jesus died on the cross to take my punishment. That’s how important I am to Him. That’s why He’s the only “people” I need to be worried about pleasing.

Here's the Thing: It’s really easy to get distracted by what we see, and it’s really hard, on earth, to see God. When John the Baptist saw the crowds leaving him and flocking to Jesus, he didn’t get jealous, he didn’t try to win them back, he rightly recognized that Jesus must become more and he must become less, and he was ok with it. In the end, he died alone in prison, but he wasn’t alone at all really. God saw him completely and had His loving eye upon him. John moved from a world where he was alone, to an incredible place where he would never be lonely again.