But there must be a real giving up of the self. You must throw it away “blindly” so to speak. Christ will indeed give you a real personality: but you must not go to Him for the sake of that. As long as your own personality is what you are bothering about you are not going to Him at all. The very first step is to try to forget about the self altogether. Your real, new self (which is Christ’s and also yours, and yours just because it is His) will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for Him. Does that sound strange? The same principle holds, you know, for more everyday matters. Even in social life, you will never make a good impression on other people until you stop thinking about what sort of impression you are making. Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it. The principle runs through all life from top to bottom. Give up your self, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end: submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in. (Lewis, Mere Christianity, Book 4, Chapter 11, last paragraph)

It reminds me of

For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it. (Matthew 16:25 NIV 1984)

Have I lost my life to save it?  Interesting question…  Not long ago, when Deacon Ken gave a beautiful Pentecost homily asking us to think about what we do for God who does so much for us, I found myself lamenting that I don’t do a thing.   A voice whispered in my ear “You teach CCD”.   My response was that I love teaching those children.  The voice whispered again “Women’s Prayer Group….” and I responded that I get so much more out of WPG than I put in… and the voice whispered “Of course you do.  That’s the way I want it…”

So while I can’t say I’ve fully lost my personality to Christ and found a new one, I have an inkling that I am in the process.  I know I am His daughter.  And like any good Father, He will give me so much more than I put in, and so much more than I can fully comprehend.  My job as His little girl is to love Him, trust Him, follow Him, and obey Him.  True, sometimes I could do better.  But He loves me.

More posts on this chapter can be found on my friend Sarah’s blog today.