During this week of Prayer and fasting we are challenged to think about what is means to “deny ourselves” I found this anonymous poem which is uncomfortably relevant to the subject
Dying to Self
When you are forgotten, or neglected, or purposely
Set at naught, and you don’t sting and hurt with the insult or the oversight, but your heart is happy, being counted worthy to suffer for Christ
THAT IS DYING TO SELF
When your good is evil spoken of, when your wishes
Are crossed, your advice disregarded, your opinion ridiculed, and you refuse to let anger rise in your heart, or even defend yourself, but take it all in patient loving silence,
THAT IS DYING TO SELF
When you lovingly and patiently bear any disorder, any
Irregularity, any unpunctuality, or any annoyance; when you
Can stand face to face with waste, folly, extravagance, spiritual insensibility and endure it as Jesus endured it
THAT IS DYING TO SELF
When you are content with any food, any offering, any raiment, any climate, any society, any solitude, any interruption by the will of God,
THAT IS DYING TO SELF
When you never care to refer to yourself in conversation, or to record your own good works, or itch after commendation, when you can truly love to be unknown,
THAT IS DYING TO SELF
When you can see your brother prosper and have his need met
And can honestly rejoice with him in spirit and feel no envy or question God, while your own needs are far greater and in desperate circumstances,
THAT IS DYING TO SELF
When you can receive correction and reproof from one of less stature than yourself, and can humbly submit inwardly as well as outwardly, finding no rebelling or resentment rising up within your heart,
THAT IS DYING TO SELF
Are you dead yet?
From the Zebra Bag 
I just got to reading this- Ouch!