DYING TO SELF?

I just finished reading Searching for God Knows What by Don Miller tonight. I feel like I shouldn't pick up a new book now, but read Searching again, because I probably missed half of what he said. And I was finding that every time I went back to reading after leaving the pages for a couple days (or hours), I would have this thought: "Oh yeah, these are really profound ideas that, if I could remember and apply them in my day-to-day living and thinking, would really make a difference. But I forget them as soon as I put down the book. What is wrong with me?"

If I had to summarize what I "got out of*" the book (*this phrase is one of the more obnoxious phrases Christians use), it would be that when I set out on this relational journey with Jesus, I died to myself and began to live in him. Obviously, I haven't died to me, and in fact, I much more often feel like I'm living my ways than his. But, in one of the paradoxes that Jesus seems to like so much, I both have died to me and yet am still in the process of dying. This may sound masochistic, which is a word Miller uses in the book, but maybe it will make more sense when I explain more specifically what it is I am aiming toward dying from:

I want to die from worrying all the time about how I am being received...
from guarding myself so carefully that I miss out on intimacy with people...
from allowing my insecurities to stop me completely from doing things that I love and could help others...
from responding with such quick irritation or/and anger when I am slightly inconvenienced or wounded...
from classifying people so easily into categories of "cool" and "weird" (craving the attention of the former and dismissing the latter)...
from being too lazy to let people know I care about them...
from saying my life is about love, when it is really only about me being comfortable...

Perhaps when Jesus says we die to ourselves, it's not so much about letting go of the things we love (though sometimes that kind of sacrifice is asked of us), but about letting go of the things that smother our souls, in order to make room for the good things of Jesus, like an affection for others, a boldness to love, a freedom and boldness to use our gifts and talents to bless the people around us, and a sense of complete and overflowing acceptance and belonging and validation coming straight from the greatest Lover in all the universe.

Basically, all these ideas are in the book. I wanted to put them down before I forgot them all. Again.