I, like the rest of the country, have watched in horror at Charlie Sheen unraveling his life and saying the most entitled and egotistical things that could ever be spoken. My first reaction was how destructive fame and money could be in our lives. However, I changed my tune after a brief conversation at the homeless shelter this week. Someone came to complain that they were only allowed 10 minute showers. I thought to myself, “How interesting that people with literally nothing, being blessed by this organization, after all of the sacrifices made by volunteers, is complaining about only getting 10 minutes in the nice hot shower before they went to their nice warm bed, paid for by people who believe that nobody should sleep in the cold in our country.” It was in the same vein as Charlie Sheen announcing that he needed to make $3 million an episode, rather than his measly $2 million. Completely on opposite sides of the spectrum, but the very same heart behind it!

As I thought about it, I realized that all of us have a streak of entitlement in us. Definitely not as pronounced as what we have seen by Sheen on the news, but nonetheless, we still think that we DESERVE and EARN the right to have whatever it is that we WANT when we want it.

Maybe that’s the real reason that Christianity is so difficult for most people to grasp. God’s love is UNDESERVED, you CAN’T earn it, and you have to surrender everything YOU want for what HE wants. It’s contrary to everything that our flesh pushes us towards. It truly becomes an exercise in sacrificial love and surrender to a God that you trust with your needs and desires.

I can say that the most beautiful people I know grasp the undeserved love, unearned grace, and release their own entitlement to His will. It is the polar opposite to the insanity that Sheen is parading in front of the cameras. My prayer for him, and for all of us, is that we would bend against the force of entitlement in our lives and rest in the fact that, if nothing else, we have the love of Christ available to us. What more could we possibly need?

I was watching the Nate Berkus show during my bout with the flu as I spent WAY too much time in bed. One moment in the show literally messed me up, so I thought I would share it with you and mess you up!

They had an organizer come to help with simple solutions. She took a purse from a lady in the audience and dumped it out on the table. Of course the woman was horrified by the disaster! The lady began to say, “Honestly, this is just my purse! I’m a very organized person in every other area of my life!” The organizer pursed her lips and shook her head. You could see the lady feel the need to convince her. “No, really, it’s true. My house, my car…the REST is really clean!” The organizer then said a statement that changed my life. “How you do one thing is how you do everything.”

It was like a lightbuld went on in my life. I say all of the time, “Sorry about my car, everything else is organized, but my car is always a mess.” As that organizer said those words “how you do one thing is how you do everything”, I thought about my cupboards, my garage, my own purse, my life…it’s all crammed with too much stuff with very little plan or purpose for WHY I have all of this stuff!!! I had to stop and change what I believed about myself.

Now I’m on a quest. I’m not planning on just fixing my car anymore, but rather planning to rethink my strategies for my entire life. The reality that I faced is that there is a core in myself that stops me from organization and changing little pieces will not change the reality. (I still blame my creative streak, but I think I can be creative and organized, so we’ll see!)

What areas of your life do you need to rethink from top to bottom? Are there areas of yourself where you are denying the reality of your weaknesses? Good luck facing that reality and changing what you want to change about yourself! There’s always room for improvement and let’s all fight to be who we want to be!