Standing in church one Sunday, I felt a light tap on my shoulder. I turned around and the tapper whispered in my ear, "I'm sorry to tell you this, but you have an elephant sticker on your backend." Seriously? An ELEPHANT?! If I had to be wearing a sticker there, my preference probably would have been almost any sticker but an elephant one. In those days we had kids at home who loved to leave stickers laying around face-up for unsuspecting sitters. We would find ourselves wearing stickers of all sorts everywhere unknowingly. Sometimes the things we carry around are like that. They remain unknown to us, but others can see them clearly. This has been an elephant year for me. Have you ever had one of those?
God has been cleaning out debris from my life, showing me things in myself I had no idea were present and helping me find Himself in greater ways. I am truly finding it's the "kindness of God that leads us to repentance." (Romans 2:4) The tapper on that Sunday helped me immensely. Instead of the elephant sticker proudly riding around on my backend that Sunday, he was quickly folded up and put in my purse.
God has been my tapper this year and I have found myself to be safely in His love as He transforms some of those twisty places to be more like Him. I am covered in Elephant stickers, but God is lovingly pulling them off one by one. God loves to do this for us. Some of our elephant stickers are our own doing and some are results of things that have happened to us, but all of them distort relationship with God and others. They cause us to live self-protective lives that keep us from the freedom God so desires for us. They keep us living small and confined when God has invited us into a spacious place where we can freely give and receive love.
Humility allows us to see our own elephant stickers. What if I told the tapper that Sunday she was wrong because I had looked in the mirror both front and back that AM and saw nothing? Furthermore, I couldn't see it so it wasn't there. I could have turned around, ignored that super sticky thing and let it hitch a ride all day.
We do that all the time with things in our life. Relationship after relationship has the same issue and we wonder what is wrong with everyone else. We readily see what's wrong with others, but rarely see what's wrong with ourselves. We want mercy and grace for our own selves while providing judgment and criticism for others. Life circumstances, others' feedback, relationship stress and so many other things in our lives yell, "You have a sticker!" but we refuse to believe it and think that others misunderstand us and are seeing things that aren't there. We get embarrassed, defensive, feel victimized and hold others responsible for seeing the sticker when really other eyes on us is sometimes a gift of grace even if it's hard in the moment.
Sometimes we know the sticker is there and feel ashamed and embarrassed and are unsure how to remove it. We ignore it and claim it's part of our outfit. Sometimes we even put socks on to match it. "This is the way I'm wired," "you must just take me as I am," "Let me do me," and we wear our sticker proudly forgetting it's not really part of us even though it's a way we function in life. Sometimes we even throw people out of our lives who see the sticker because they make us feel bad about ourselves when they mention it. Humility is being willing to see. Pride is closing our eyes to ourselves. We have an elephant in the room we are refusing to see that crowds our life. Walking through life with closed eyes is bound to cause a fall. (Proverbs 16:18)
We are all bent because we are human and God desires to straighten us so we aren't curved in ourselves but this requires seeing. Pride insists, "I am straightened out but you are bent." Humility says, "I am bent and so are you. With Jesus, I will learn to love you in your bentness and rely on Him for mine." Seeing ourselves as we are with God allows God to do what only God can do in our lives. Insisting we are fine while refusing to see ourselves as we really are causes us to not be able to come close to God. He wants to deal with us as we actually are, not who we pretend to be. He will never deal with us as we pretend to be.
Psalm 138:6 Through the Lord is exalted, he takes note of the humble; but he knows the haughty from the distance.
What can be so difficult is we desperately want to hide from what is wrong in ourselves because so often it produces shame in us, but God holds us tenderly and knowingly in those spaces and only reveals to heal. Transforming requires seeing and seeing requires humility. Humility requires trust that God loves us even though we are bent and wearing stickers. He is never surprised by what He sees in us. We are the only ones surprised and we can rest in His love for us and trust Him to do the work He needs to do in us.
The other day as I was journaling, I sensed God saying, "Humility is being content to be human and willing to let Me do something about your sin. Pride is the longing to be god-like in your own eyes and in the eye of others and trying to hide those places that aren't."
Humility requires safety and willing ourselves to be more humble rarely works. Pride is our way of hiding ourselves out of fear of being seen as we really are. It is why we judge and criticize others and seek to elevate ourselves. It causes envy of other's successes and secret happiness when things go wrong for others. It grants us permission to gossip. It is a way of life that isolates and looks at others as commodities to compete with rather than imagers of God made to be loved. Comparison causes us to either feel better or worse depending on who we are comparing ourselves against. These secret ways of life in us destroy our relationships and keep us living on the surface. God desires so much more for us.
The way out of pride is not to try harder, but to go to God with the trust we have for Him at this moment. "God, you see me as I am, show Me what you want me to see in me." When we see something in us, instead of covering, hiding and ignoring, we place our fears, our shame and our ready defensive responses in God's hand. The God who fed thousands with a couple of fish and some loaves; the One Who can move mountains with the faith of a mustard seed, can certainly hold our halting and opening clenched fists with His nail scarred hands to take what has protected us for so long. Confession is a practice of humility. Humility is seeing and pride is blinding. Let's walk through life with open eyes and come to God with all that we are knowing He loves us, is for us and desires complete freedom for us.
Psalm 51:6 (ESV) Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart.
James 4:6 (ESV) God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.
II Corinthians 10:12 (ESV) Not that we dare to classify or compare ourselves with some of those who are commending themselves. But when they measures themselves by one another and compare themselves with one another, they are without understanding.
