Pride

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I haven’t seen a day like this in a long time. I even put the top down in my car – March 13th – and flew down the highway with my shades on. Sometimes I can’t believe the way the sun glints off the trees.

But two days ago, it was not so lovely. Inside or out. Wound up in myself and disappointments, I forgot how beautiful it is.

When it’s warm

when the sun heats the top of my head

when I wake up to see a cardinal perched in a pear tree (yes, a pear tree)

when I can hear the bees waking up

when I sip strong coffee in the early morning

when the light turns pink in the evening.

I forget a lot of things when all I can see are my shortcomings. Or my circumstances. One thing I realized the other day is that pride has two faces. Yes, there’s that well-recognized cocky attitude, with a haughty look and a sharp, appraising tongue. But then there’s the other side. The side that says:

I’m not good enough. I’m ugly. I’m stupid. What did I think I was worth? 

This sounded like humility to me at first, in my confused mind. Then I realized it’s just pride’s other face; if I really think all those things, then I think that I, the core of me, deserves more. That these circumstances aren’t good enough. That I’m not smart enough because I as a created being should be smarter. I’m not as pretty as I deserve to be.

Somehow, in this bright yellow light, sitting at my kitchen table, I am comforted by this realization. Another piece of the puzzle. Oswald Chambers says that the Christian fails because she puts more store in her own holiness than she does in building the kingdom, in proclaiming Christ’s redemption.

That is not how I want to be.

My holiness should not be my focal point, as odd as that sounds.

It should be a byproduct of my total devotion to my God.

And where does this leave me? At the kitchen table, with my family working around me, breathing deeply the spring air. It leaves me asking with (mercifully) a little less urgency, Where am I going?