January was a strange month. It started out in one of my favorite places with some of my favorite people Ottawa, with my friends from Augustine College. I returned to Toronto to face a few realities though.

First among these realities was that 2009 was not the best year of my life, not even close.  Somewhere in the process of coming home from school and turning a long distance relationship into a regular relationship I lost sight of the big picture.  I realized last month just how self-involved I had been, and to some extent still am.  I realized that I had not been able to see past my own nose, my own problems, and my own wants and desires to recognize the deleterious effects my self-involvement had on my relationships.

What I’m starting to realize is that when Christ told his disciples to die to themselves it was because the self is selfish.  When we live in Christ all our relationships find a new, right, ordering.  This ordering operates according to the original design for human relationships.  I have realized in the past month, as I’ve tried to incorporate disciplines of prayer, study, and fasting into my life, that the more I lean on Christ, the better my peripheral relationships become.  The more I turn inwards, the more I treat others like objects.  My prayer while attending Candlemas tonight was this: “Lord, let me love you first, so that I may love others through you.”

I can only care, and love, so much from myself, before what I want gets in the way.  I write this like I’ve got it figured out, but those who know me well know that the selfish me lurks and rears his ugly face far too quickly still.  I can only say I’m growing.