Boy, you gotta love someone more than yourself.

I was convinced to give Yellowcard’s new album one more shot. Yes, my original complaint was that it was not pop-punk and emo enough, but once I got past the rock guitar intros, I realized it was still Yellowcard. You have to enjoy music that you can scream at the top of your lungs and feel like the song’s about you. I don’t know all the words yet, but I’ve got this one line stuck in my head.

“Boy, you gotta love someone more than yourself.”

I was running late to a job this morning because that’s how I roll. Somehow I am just always late. I was running especially late and gave the lady a heads up. She did not appreciate my tardiness and let me know using the tone of her voice. I was immediately in a bad mood. How dare this lady think the world revolves around her! I made sure she knew I was running late and offered my apologies and that was not good enough — like she had somewhere more important to be. Pfft.

Then, just five minutes later, as I was turtling my way through the parking lot, some lady decides to just walk out in front of me. No nodding of the head or waving of the hand as to say, “Thanks for letting me cross!” She just took her precious time walking in front of me like my car was invisible. Not just walking, more like a trudge. Not once did her head turn to me and I thought, “Geez lady, you think it’d hurt you to pick up the pace just a little bit? I’m running late here!”

That’s when I realized I was just as selfish as my customer had been.

Today was one of those retrospective days. I had a lot of time in the car, I had Yellowcard singing meaningful things at the right times, and I got to hear from people I don’t normally see and they said things I don’t normally hear. I wouldn’t call what I’m going through a mid-mid-life crisis by any means, but I think I have been slowly trying to stop for a second and re-examine my priorities. You know how that goes. For the most part, ever since I’ve moved to Dallas, there are clearly two roads. Good road, bad road. Both lead into that crazy land of the future, something I still hate to think about. And since I hate thinking about it, I’ve been walking that fine line between the roads. But I know they have to split somewhere.

What do I want out of my life? What kind of crazy plans do I have for myself? I still don’t have an exact answer, but the general answer, I think remains the same. I don’t want to waste what I’ve got. See, I believe that I was made exactly the way I was made for a reason and each person affects another person and we’re all just one huge Domino Rally. Sure, I’ll never make a history book, but what I say and do today will affect my family, my friends, and the everyday people I encounter whether I want to acknowledge that fact or not. And so on and so forth, and if you think in the grand scheme of things, what you’re doing today is changing what some person’s life will be like a hundred years from now. That’s a lot of responsibility.

Everybody wants to be remembered. In fact, people do the craziest things to be remembered. So how do I want to be remembered? I’d love to ask my closest friends to see what they’d say about me if I died and my funeral was today. Was I simply the funny kid? Or maybe that really talented girl who played guitar and wrote a few songs. Or the girl that fixed my computer once. Honestly, if I died today and that’s all anyone had to say about me, I would kick my own face and call myself a failure. Okay, I retract the previous statement — I don’t believe you can fail at life, but I believe you can either live or truly die to self and live.

If you pick up a Bible and read I Cor 13, it seems to give a much more in-depth definition of love than Webster could ever offer. It doesn’t matter whether you believe the whole book is true, I can’t imagine anyone arguing that love isn’t kind, love gets angry and love can be rude. I mean, we’re always apologizing when we get like that and I don’t believe love should have to apologize. And if you think about who personified love in the Bible and everything He did — again, whether you fully believe this or not — either way, I don’t think many people can argue that Jesus was a selfish guy. Point to a line in the Bible that hints He ever thought of Himself over anyone save the line, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani!” I think it’s safe to say that love is synonymous with selflessness.

Now, I know I’ll never be remembered as that girl that could walk on water. Or that Asian kid that could heal the lepers. But I guess my hope is that when people look back on my life, they can see what I have learned about love. Hopefully they will know whether I loved the world or whether I loved Christ.

Right now, I know the answer is unclear. I’ve got a lot of work to do.

Teach a man to fish, and there’s no “I” in team.

So how do you teach someone to trust?

I’ve rambled to a few people about what I think about this and now I’m rambling here. Trust is kinda sorta like a house of playing cards. It takes awhile to set the foundation and that’s if you even want to bother trying to make the house in the first place. Then, it’s a lot of sweat and shaky hands. It takes a lot of work. But man, does that house look cool or not once you start running out of cards and start sitting back and smiling? Oh, but wait a minute. One wrong move and WHOOSH! No more house. Unless you built a good foundation, then maybe, just maybe, you don’t have to start all over. (Does that analogy work?)

Alright. We’ve settled the fact that trust takes a whole load of work to build up and one wrong move and we’re back to square one. Or even negative square one. But either way, how do we retrain ourselves to trust? Or if we were at fault, how do we earn back trust? To answer the latter, I think we need to answer the former.

We have to learn to trust someone before we can expect them to trust us. You have to pull the trigger first or chance waiting at the starting line with no one knowing when to launch forward. This first step, for most, is the hardest part. We were born dependent, but quickly we learn that the world is a tricky place full of tricky people and sometimes those tricky people are your friends. Sometimes the people that let you down the most are people who are near and dear to your heart and man, that hurts. So when we get back up and we’re given the choice to rebuild what was broken, we are naturally going to be hesitant. Questions, questions. Do I want to trust? How much will I trust? Why can’t I trust?

Hmm. I John 4:19 says, “We love Him because He first loved us.” We can safely change that to “We trust Him because He first trusted us.” Who doesn’t know the story of Adam and Eve? Who doesn’t know that God created them and then gave them all sorts of stuff to be in charge of. He gave them land. He gave them animals. And although we mucked that up, God still trusts us with the ultimate responsibility of loving Him and showing His love to others. He still trusts us. He still loves us.

What am I trying to say. I Cor 13 says love “always trusts.” We are not to lean on our own understanding, but to trust the Lord with all our heart. So, while we are not necessarily supposed to completely trust others, we are at least to exemplify the trustworthiness of the Lord to others by being trustworthy first. And then, perhaps, that person may learn to trust.

Oh my gosh, it is late and I will wake up and not understand a word of this.