I am not a person prone to depression. However over the past few years I have found my self struggling with several emotions which, if I dwell on them, seem to end up robbing me of my joy in life. These emotions are all related to relevancy. The need to feel needed! In myself I feel I have a lot of wisdom gained over the past 69 years. I feel that I can still contribute and be of benefit to those around me. The problem is, in fact, that in the fields where I used to excel, I am no longer able to keep up. I see people younger than me able to come up with solutions quickly. They are much more able to accept “appliance technology” by utilizing the work done by others rather than develop the technology themselves.

Many of us had to develop our own technology out of necessity and it became fun and a real source of our relevancy. Those of us who did this learned that being capable of developing things from scratch whether it was building a computer, writing a program in Basic, fixing a car, rebuilding a transmission or any other skill was what made us who we are. These things gave us relevancy and we bathed in the accomplishment. But, in me it also created pride of accomplishment. Now that this is slowly disappearing, I no longer seem to be important and my accomplishments begin to diminish in comparison to those younger than me. I no longer have the source of my pride.

In response to this I have found that I try to hang on to relevancy by relating my accomplishments as often as I can to whomever will listen, and even if they don’t listen. What I am actually doing is trying to feed my pride.

All of this has led me to look back over my life and try to determine the motive of all of the things I have accomplished. Were they all for “look at me” reasons? Were any of them done for the good of others? I am not asking myself if they helped others because I know they did. Instead I am asking why did I do them? You see for last 30 years or so I have been a believer in Jesus Christ. I have worked hard in my vocation, I have given away some valuable time and energy to various service organizations, I have donated the services of companies that I have controlled, I have served as a leader in my church, I have been a missionary to a third world country and many other things that might bore you with their mention. In spite of being a Christian for that long, it is only in the past 10 years or so that I began to realize that whatever good was accomplished was only because of the gifts that God has graciously given me.

So, why do I struggle with being relevant? Why can I not just accept that God has gifted others to take over? Is it that old pesky pride again? The answer is YES. It is pride rearing it’s ugly head. I know in my head that I cannot take credit for anything I have done, yet my heart wants to be recognized. I need to remember that God is the only one who matters, He created me, He gifted me, He arranged the opportunities, and He pushed me when I was going too slowly.

What I need to confirm each and every day is this; He is the only one who has the right to be proud of anything. He enabled and allowed me to do everything, therefore He is the only one that can give me the relevancy that I crave. When I remember the things I have done, and thank Him for all of them, my Joy will be renewed.