I Am So Vain

Ramblings of a Girl with Just the Right Amount of Insomnia

By Celena Janton

I've never thought of myself as a vain person and Facebook status updates don't usually float around in my mind longer than the seven seconds it takes to read them. But one that I read the other day did.

I didn't even click “Like,” because I didn't exactly like it at the time. I didn't admit it to myself then, but it hit a bit too close to home.

It was about vanity and selfishness, pretty much, and when I read it I thought, So true! Glad I'm not like that! So I filed it away in the back of my mind where it stayed till I woke up and couldn't go back to sleep at 4:30 in the morning.

I lay there and couldn't sleep and kept thinking about that status update. Really. Do you think your status updates aren't important? They're probably not, but they might be once in a while.

I kept thinking about how Facebook can make people vain, or reveal how vain they already were. I mean, how many of my own little status updates were written just because I had something I thought was so clever, or because I wanted people to like me or notice me?

Then I started thinking about my “About Me” section. It is way long – longer than most people's. I love to write, and I want people to know me, but really, do I need twenty-four sentences in place of the four words other people use to describe themselves?

I thought about other things I had put on Facebook. My favorite books. My favorite movies.

People who inspire me.
A very long time ago, the most inspiring Man ever (who also happened to be God) said, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake, he is the one who will save it. For what is a man profited if he gains the world and loses himself?” (Luke 9:23-25).
So while I couldn't sleep that night, I realized why certain people who inspire me inspire me. They inspire me because they gave infinitely more of their lives for other people.

They “lost” their own lives... their own wills... their own simple little pleasures that seemed so important until they realized deep down in their hearts that life did not revolve around them.

Florence Nightingale was beautiful. I portrayed her in a play for children's church last year and read so much about her that I felt like I knew her.

She was witty and charming and rich and everyone wanted to marry her. She went to balls in England's high society and lived a life of pleasure and seeming-contentment.

But she was not content. She kept thinking of so many people who were hurting; she didn't even know them, but she was not content to continue living her life for herself when she knew she could do something about it.

As for me, I find out a little bit about one person's sadness and my heart feels like it breaks in half for them! But Florence Nightingale wanted to give up her life for people she didn't even know.
I realize God gives everyone their little place in the world where they can “lay down their life.”

I can't, of course, go around the world and show thousands of people I care about them like the lovely Florence Nightingale did, but I can at least look a little bit past my own vanity.

Because the world doesn't revolve around me, no matter how much I sometimes (if I'm honest with myself) wish it did.
Sometimes, I wake up with the dawn and I know Jesus wants me to pray, and I think: Yeah, I can pray in my bed where it's nice and cozy. There's nothin' wrong with that.

I fall back to sleep in, like, a minute.

Celena, you are a selfish, vain, lazy bum—people need you to pray for them!

Maybe you don't agree, but prayer is more than words.

It's a sweet-smelling incense to God. It's more tangible than so many things you can do. It's a way to touch someone's life who you can't otherwise do anything for.
So that day, after day upon day of a conviction I ignored, I got out of bed and actually got on my knees and prayed – for real – for the people on my heart. And after that, God made my day and blessed me in lots of different little ways, and spoke to my heart.

I lost my own will, my own life, for just about ten minutes. And for that small, tiny, almost unmentionable sacrifice, He blessed me abundantly and gave me back whatever of my own comfort I might have lost.
If I can feel that way because of something so simple, what would my life be like – what kind of fulfillment would I have – if I really was like Florence Nightingale? If I lived always, or even half of always, for people who aren't me?

Sleeping in, daydreaming, and wanting things I shouldn't be wanting is not living.

“Love your neighbor as yourself." Help me, Jesus, I want to live that!