Giving your life for another

Hello Everyone!

This is my first blogging experience and I'm rather new with it, so if I mess up somewhere along the lines, please forgive me.

So, what does it mean to you to sacrifice yourself? What does it mean when someone is selfless? When they give of themselves without looking for anything in return? What does this mean to us when someone selflessly helps us? Whether it's a police officer, fireman, paramedic, or any of a hundred others who we see in our day to day lives, whether it's the next door neighbor or the man that jogs by your home every morning before the sun's even come out. How can we be selfless without realizing it? Why do we get a flood of warmth in our hearts when someone says we have a servant's heart or thank us for doing something for them?

I'm looking down at my hands right now and the skin's already starting to peel a bit from PT this morning. There are quite a few things in my life that I can't quite explain how or why I do them, like PT. I get up early in the morning, typically around 0500, don my PT gear and go running over to the ROTC building for an hour and a half of push-ups, sit-ups, running, and several other exercises whose names I can't remember, before trudging off exhausted to get a shower and get to class. I've had several people stare at me surprised when I explain this to them. They're amazed at the fact that I can even be up that early, and voluntarily no less.
Let me ask again, what makes someone selfless?
I've been told on several occasions that I have a servant's heart. I do the right thing without thinking about it. I subconsciously help people. Though, it isn't quite me that's helping others. I can't claim the servant's heart that I have as my own, since it was given to me. That subconscious desire to help those in need is a gift that I have been entrusted with from God. To truly have happiness, the glory must be given up to Him. There's no other way for our lives to work. We can take our lives into our hands for a few moments, but we inevitably fall back into our own sins and the ways of the world. We stand back up and push through again and again, but God is standing beside us, trying to point the way around the wall we've found ourselves in front of.
God is the reason that I have the strength and will and servant's heart that I do. It is because of Him that I can live and with that realization I see that my life is not my own. To be a servant is to give of yourself completely and wholly and to not expect or demand anything in return. Think of all the times when you've gone to work for someone, and when you were done with whatever it was, be it yardwork, helping in their garage, anything, and you were tired, sweaty and worn out. Now, imagine that you never got thanks for any of it. The person you were helping walked out their door, glanced at what you'd done, shrugged, and turned back inside and locked their door. They didn't invite you in, they didn't thank you, they didn't offer you anything to drink, they completely ignored what you had done. What would you do? Would you get mad? Angry? Furious? Would you turn home defeated? Would you shrug it off and go do something for yourself? Would you complain? What would you do in that situation?
Being a servant is having that happen, and still being joyful. Now, that's not to say that you're happy and ecstatic that someone just slammed their door in your face, but it's more that you are able to move beyond it. You pull yourself out of your situation and look at what you've done for this person. You realize that there is more than just you and more than just them. You catch a glimpse of that bigger picture, and you're content in your situation.
This is what I want to be able to do. I'm still working on being able to pull myself away from me. To get out of my comfort zone and move beyond who I think I am and become who God has made me to be. It's only when we give everything up to Him, understanding it might not come back, that we may lose everything, and we're faced with our own mortality, the fact that we are here for just a blip of time. I want to be able to leave myself behind and ignore myself in order to serve others. That is my reason for deciding to join the military and defend freedom for those around me. It's why I am standing up, it's the one thing that I strive for and that keeps me going. I want to be a true servant, to have selflessness so ingrained into who I am that it happens automatically, that it becomes something I can't explain and that I can give completely to God and realize that it all comes from him. That is my one desire.
So, let me ask you. What does it mean to be a servant?