Most everyone wants to feel they are making a difference and are contributing in a meaningful way. However, have you ever considered needing to feel as if you are making that contribution can actually short-circuit the success of the endeavor? Is true success “being the go-to-guy” or being the parent or leader that “has all the answers” and is the one you can run to for help at any time? While it certainly is special to be able to offer support and assistance, if we are not careful, it can make us indispensable, which will be a problem when it is time to pass the baton. I would suggest the need to be needed can quickly hijack our actual goal because it makes us the object of our own service even as we look and feel that we are serving another. But is the need to be needed really a bad thing?
The goal in serving someone else should always ultimately lead to us equipping them to care for themselves. A great teacher doesn’t come to your desk and solve the problem for you as you grapple with the challenge. He or she supports you and guides you through the process that produces the answer. Why? Because the goal is for you to be able to do it, yourself. In the same way, it always feels so nice when our children look to us for help, hope, and encouragement. But if our 30 year old still needs us to tie their shoes, have we truly been successful in raising them? Or, have we created an endless dependance upon our ability to meet their needs because our need to be needed has superseded the goal of empowerment? (Read my post People Pleasing Power Drain)
True Success is Being Forgotten
It is a bit of a double entendre when I suggest true success is being forgotten. Not only do I think we are often forgetting what the definition of true success is, but also I feel we are not fully succeeding in life until we are empowering others to the point that we are easily forgotten. There is a certain pain in that process which keeps many from embracing this type of success. I feel it, for sure. When you have dreamed, and reached, and worked, and prayed to see a thing come about, the last thing you want is to be disassociated from that which you helped accomplish! In our hearts though we know it is the truest of successes. It is when we have affected a thing or a life to the point it is better, more alive, and flourishing needing nothing of us to do so that we have truly been a success. Anything else wouldn’t really be freedom… it would be bondage to our need to be associated with it. As CS Lewis writes…
“Swimming lessons are better than a lifeline to the shore. For of course that lifeline is really a death line.”
Anchors Away
If left unchecked, the need to be needed will drown the very things we have desired to launch. We must remember the goal is never our accolades, but God’s smile. We put a smile on the face of God when we selflessly give of ourselves in order that another may flourish. And to truly flourish, a project or a person needs to be freed… no longer dependent on us to keep it alive. Until that moment, there is yet a lack of freedom. Perhaps you feel that is too much to ask or simply too painful to endure. But in that case we are forgetting the reward. (Read my post Don’t Fall In Love With Caterpillars)
“Love is its own reward; the recognition can wait.”
– Jon Tyson
Have you loved well? Then your have gained much. Have you been able to enjoy the process of seeing the growth, maturity, and progress of the object of your love? Then know you have had the immense joy of being on such a journey together and that, in itself, is so much of the reward! I would suggest part of our goal should be to be forgotten – not insignificant, just not needing to be paraded. If we love selflessly, we take the narrow road of Jesus Christ. Broadway has all the lights and neon signs of recognition. The narrow way is the road less travelled but is the one that leads to life and true fulfillment. In the work “Middlemarch” by George Elliot the comment is made…
“The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”
Let us offer the need to be needed to the author of love; God Himself. In so doing, we find our peace. He, who came as a servant, to seek and save that which was lost, is the only One who can help us empower others so they can flourish whilst keeping our hearts secured in His great love. He never forgets. He knows every sacrifice, catches every tear, and understands our every temptation to reach for significance in our efforts and achievements. However, by the way of the cross, Jesus demonstrated the way to true life in serving others to the point of utter emptiness. But in that empty place, God exalted Him to the highest place, giving Him the Name above all other Names. Today, let us leave the need to be needed in His hands, and let us serve with no strings attached so we will leave a wake of freedom and empowerment behind us at every turn. Selah. (Read my post How Honoring Others Blesses You)
From The Bible:
“Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant,and whoever wants to be first must be your slave—just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” – Matthew 20:26-28 NIV
Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. – Philippians 2:3-4 NIV
Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. – John 15:13 NIV