Denying Myself

Then Jesus said to His disciples, "If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. ~Matthew 16:24

The Lord has been teaching me about denying myself. Sure, there's the aspect of me giving up the comforts of the US, giving up my career, being away from my family and loved ones, etc, but God has taught me about denying myself in a different aspect. Recently, I've been staying overnight at the orphanage a couple nights a week in order to give some of the staff a break. While staying overnight, I'm responsible for the care of the babies and little ones. This usually involves my sleep being interrupted several times during the night. There's one baby that especially gives me trouble. This little one came to us in Dec extremely malnourished, but after some love and care he has fattened up nicely and is doing very well. The problem is that in his mind he still thinks he's starving and any time his stomach isn't as full as it possibly can be, he thinks he needs to eat. This coupled with the fact that he's very strong willed makes it especially challenging to me. He usually wakes up a couple times during the night demanding a bottle and when he wakes up, he wakes up mad! I've taken it upon myself to try to break him of this bad habit. One night he woke up mad demanding a bottle, however I knew he didn't really need one since he just ate a couple hours earlier. To try to appease him, I held him and tried to soothe him and get him to go back to bed. When he realized I wasn't giving him a bottle, he only got mad and started screaming and throwing a temper tantrum. I was ready to battle it out with him that night, unfortunately we sleep in a room with 12 other people, and not only that, noise travels really easily in the house. I had to break down that night and give him a bottle and I felt anger welling up inside of me. I mean, really, why was a two year dictating to me what to do? As I laid in bed, trying not to be mad about the situation, God kept bringing to mind "he must deny himself" I realized that I had to deny my desire to win that battle and give in to him in order to protect the common good of the orphanage and allow the others to get a good nights sleep.