Humble Pie

 Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord.

I didn't realize what a stronghold pride is in my life. I have all sorts of pride pockets that God has been slowly (or jarringly suddenly) revealing in my life this year.  

A few months ago, I reluctantly joined a women's Bible study (because God said I should) at church and the entire study was on Job. I felt like I had a good grasp on suffering between different life events and wasn't prepared to get anything out of it except maybe a reminder of how to suffer well or how to come alongside someone else suffering. 

Then Job just kept popping up, in sermons or podcasts that were in my downloaded queue, in this study, in my daily Bible readings, not once but TWICE. I finished my current Bible reading plan and started a chronological one. Guess what came after Genesis? JOB AGAIN.

Then, yesterday morning, I was sitting in the Bible study and realized that God was trying to drill HUMILITY into my head, or maybe more importantly into my heart. It's been a theme in my life that has taught me the most and that I consistently forget or abandon. 

I don't FEEL like a proud person but it turns out I have a whole bunch of weird notions about myself that God is undoing. Side note: I don't recommend telling him to show you your faults. He will. 

I have a long history of being taken down a peg to really learn what is important. When I was 17, I headed off to France, confident in my 5 week crash course in French. Look out, world! I'm here to "help" you. That entire year was an exercise in grace from others toward me, God's grace as he allowed me to slowly and painfully learn French, being the least expressive and communicative person in the room. I painted walls. I cleaned up. I made the coffee at the back of the room and hoped no one asked me anything too complicated that I didn't understand. All the "gifts" I casually employed in leadership were useless because I couldn't communicate properly. 

I learned more in that year about God's faithfulness, the Holy Spirit's power and strength, quiet behind the scenes service, and the grace of others toward me, than in any other stage of my life. 

So naturally I forgot about it, the humility part.

Throughout my life I wish I could just take a small step off path and be immediately course corrected, but nooooo, I need to make things about me in a massive way and then have a spectacular crash. 

So here I am at 41, learning the same lessons again, but deeper and hopefully longer. This process comes with a lot of guilt and shame and grief over lost time and hurts caused to people I love.

It means looking at my marriage and the hurt I have inflicted and the patterns I need to change.

It means looking at my parenting and confessing my pride and impatience and wrongs and worse yet, changing them into service every single evening at 8pm.

It means revisiting my relationships with my family and friends and praying for opportunities to confess and apologize for hurts, to really listen, and then live in a way where I won't inflict them again.

It means starting from an understanding of how little I can do on my own and every day, asking the Holy Spirit to convict and correct me and to give over my will to His strength.

It sounds terrible basically but it's not. It's been the most freeing time, even though it's been really hard. Strongholds of shame in my life that I thought I just had to have are leaving as I speak them out loud and hand them over. Not all of them at once and it isn't easy or cute or fun but every day, God gives me enough pause to consider the small decisions I am making. He gives me a moment to stop the lies I repeat in my head and rebuke them. And when I listen, I find His strength to change course, in 100 little ways every day. And I don't always get it right and I don't always do that and then I have to come back and confess that and sit in His love until I can respond out of it again.

Recently I was cleaning the gymnastics centre my daughter trains at because we'd signed up for a week of cleaning "as a family" instead of paying out yet another fee. It's the principle of the thing, my husband felt, and as I navigated a week with him away at work on call and a daughter with a disturbingly strong strep infection, I felt strongly the opposite way. We pay someone else to help us keep up with cleaning in our own home and here I am, vacuuming around moms who are disdainfully moving their Stanley cup so I can gather their kids' goldfish crumbs into a container. 

Talk about a moment of clarity. 

I have been given so much. I have a husband who works harder than anyone I know and is continually concerned about the welfare of everyone around him and we have two incredible children. I have a beautiful home that I don't even have to always care for myself. I can go to the store and buy any groceries I want. How do I turn these blessings into bondage in my head? How? How do I live in grumbling and complaint?

In fact, I GET TO serve in a practical way that helps the incredible organization that is fostering growth and discipline in my child. It changed my whole attitude about that week of cleaning peed-on toilets and fingerprinted glass... and then God told me I should also be cleaning my church. 

Okay... what? I got the lesson, God. Let's move on to greater and more exciting things! Let's write a book! Let's run a marathon!  

Nope. Call this person and tell them you'll clean the church for the next few months.

But I don't have that person's phone number and I don't even know if they clean the church.

Your friend has their number. Get it. Contact them.

Me... this is weird so I'll just drive and listen to this podcast...

Do it.

The worst thing about telling the Holy Spirit that you want him to speak into your life is that He will and it might be manual labour, not cool trips.

So finally, I texted my friend and then sent a weird text to someone I barely know and now I am cleaning the church. And it's been a blessing TO ME. Not all the time and not when I realize I need to do it on top of other things and not when I discover Jones Cream Soda dumped by a 14 year old somewhere random in the sanctuary, but, consistently, when I do what God tells me to, quietly and (mostly) non-grudgingly, I realize He is changing my heart. I realize that following God is just one little nudge listened to after another. It's not a huge expenditure of energy and will. It's just a nod of yes and the next small right thing.

I'm not telling you this as a flex or a "look at me" thing. I don't think you need to know about it. Or any of the very small little changes that God keeps making in me. No one does. That's the other weird part.  

I'm only sharing it as an example of a seemingly random uncharacteristic urge that God put in me that doesn't really make any sense right now. I don't know if it's helpful or not. I don't know if God's going to tell me that for the next 40 years, I'm going to wield a vacuum cleaner with joy. If so, I can tell you that I'm here for it.

I just know that when I do what He says, I have peace and joy that isn't from me. I have a clarity of calm that makes me listen to the next impulse too and write it down just for me so I can look back later and say, look what you did with that, God! Who knew? Not because of me -- in spite of me. 

I am learning that there is joy and gratitude in getting to be a part of God's story, not in randomly throwing up a shout-out to God in the movie of ME. I feel so fortunate to get to be an extra, an intern, in the story of God. I am learning what humility feels like and looks like and is, one peg at a time and it is freeing.

And weirdly, it is way less striving. It's more waking up and saying, okay God, what are we doing today? And then he's like, make some lunches and hug your kids and walk your dogs and do the dishes, not "write some post everyone will ponder and then check the numbers." And I'm like, okay. Will do! 

It's looking that person in the eyes and hesitating instead of walking away. 

It's that feeling that even though there is nothing wrong with spending money on that, you should pause and reconsider. 

It's reassessing good for best. 

It's not saying the thing. 

It's shutting up, shutting up, shutting up, and listening again. 

It's like reapplying for the sub list in my town even though I'm not even sure I should teach again and not feeling any need to self promote. It's not about me and it's not about me "trying." God, if you want me in a classroom, then let me know. 

I'm still wriggling around in some habits that I have to lay down and I physically KNOW that. I'm still short tempered or selfish with my kids and husband. I still need checks from my sister 3 to 5 times a day in my attitude... but I am thankful that I get the chance to receive them. The discomfort I am feeling is now growth not unease and dissatisfaction at every turn.

I am starting to live the verse "The joy of the Lord is my strength."

Here's parts of a chapter of the Bible (Galatians 5) that has been really encouraging and challenging to me. Challenging because I used to feel so condemned by these words, especially the exhortation to stay in freedom and the list of the fruits of the Spirit. It was like a laundry list of my failures to do so, to keep my eyes on the right thing and to not be patient, kind... well all of them really. 

For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. ... For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness. ...

For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.  For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” ...

Keep in Step with the Spirit

But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.  For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. 

... But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,  gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit.

This isn't a list to aspire to. The Spirit of God is with us and He changes our hearts and our desires and gives us the right desires as we follow those nudges. I always saw the "fruit" list as things to work hard to do... but they aren't. They are results that only arrive when that nudging from the Spirit is followed and we allow the Spirit of God to permeate all the parts of our lives. I'm not there yet but I can truly say that I am excited to keep quietly saying "okay God" at the promptings of the Spirit until those things are evident in me. And it doesn't look like being the best writer/speaker/prettiest/most fit version of me. It looks like showing up and quietly doing the tasks set before me today and slowly renouncing the wrong desires until I'm filled up with the right ones. It's not me "fixing" my relationships, it's me slowly showing up properly and consistently in His strength and with His vision.

It's made me rethink so many verses I haven't understood correctly. Like this one: "For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and self-control." I read this like it's MY spirit, like I somehow have this ability to have power and love and self-control... and believe me, I really don't and then I get incredibly discouraged that I am somehow failing and doing things wrong and live in shame.

No. God's Holy Spirit has all the power and love and self-control and I can live in His Spirit because He is in me and with me since I accepted Jesus Christ as my Saviour. It seems simple (or absolutely weird and crazy) but it honestly has changed everything for me. 

This is probably very obvious to most Christ followers. I'm writing it down because I need to keep my heart on track and as a reminder for the next time I go wildly veering off course. I'm so thankful that I have people in my life who check me and aren't afraid to speak truth to me when they are concerned about the state of my heart (not at the time, I'm never thankful at all in the moment). 

I can't believe the weight of deception and shame that has been lifted from my shoulders and it's not something I DID. It's exactly the opposite of what we are told will bring us fulfillment. Self care = time/thoughts/energy about you. This is letting go of all of that and coming empty. 

After a year of discouragement and unpacking (literally) the weights I'm dragging around, I refuse to live anywhere but within the freedom for which Christ set us free.