Humility and Home

I asked God to humble me.

When I confessed this to one of my older, wiser friends, she laughingly pretended to slap me. “Why would you do that?” she asked. It was one of the stupidest prayers I’ve ever prayed, and I knew it even as I fervently spoke it over and over again. I knew I didn’t know what I was asking and I knew I wouldn’t like the way the answer felt. I had no idea how long it would take me to arrive at humility, but I anticipated that it would perhaps be a semester. By summer, I would be rid of the persistent arrogance that had hurt so many in my life, and I would be free to enjoy the bounty of God’s blessing that comes to those who are humble enough.

In other words, I prayed with the express purpose of earning the favor of God and everybody else. I prayed to be good enough.

Humility, though, comes with the qualification of knowing you are not good enough, not by yourself. Humility is not distracted by self-salvation; it readily admits its need. Humility looks to another to save.

Of course, I could rattle off this definition without wanting it. I could pray for humility without accepting what it really was. As God began to humble me, then, I began to feel a little resentful.

First, it was my grades. They took a nosedive at the beginning of my second semester, and all my straight-A dreams began to shake at their foundations. I came wailing to my parents, genuinely a bit afraid they wouldn’t love me if I failed a class. They assured me they would, though, and I kept moving forward.

Next, it was my relationships. I started hurting people, unintentionally, being terribly careless with words I had once been too shy to speak. The confidence friends and family had so long pushed me to muster looked clunky and reckless when it finally arrived. Over and over, I found myself asking for forgiveness and hoping that the world wouldn’t hate me. It did not, however. My friends extended grace upon grace, and I kept going.

After that, it was my health. I was plagued by minor ailments of unknown causes that came on with a vengeance I had never before experienced. I spent a few days in what seemed to me to be awful discomfort, wondering how anyone lived with daily chronic pain. But eventually every illness and injury cleared up, and I moved on.

Finally, the semester ended and I came to a screeching halt in the suburbs of Chicago, where things were quiet and safe. I wouldn’t have to worry about going out alone. I wouldn’t have to keep eyes peeled for everyone who might pickpocket or harass. I wouldn’t have to keep up on assignments or face professors or make new friends. Here, I was home.

For two weeks, I couldn’t bear the thought of making plans. Everything, save late mornings and lazy days, induced stress. I ached for the peace I had not had at school, but it wouldn’t come.

Instead, I found myself bogged down in the same struggles I had thought I was leaving behind. Apparently, God’s work of humility in me wasn’t finished. I found myself unable to fit where I used to. Home was no longer fully home. Whether they were really there or not, I saw a thousand shortcomings—in my family, in my friends, in my lifestyle—and I wanted to speak out against them all. Opinions I had formed at school didn’t work out practically at home. The wisdom I’d once been praised for seemed unwanted, the plans I made fell through, and I quarreled with everyone I had once been at peace with, even if only in my head.

The last straw came the night my brother, in a heated moment, told me college had turned me into a jerk. “And I think you know it,” he said, staring into my eyes, into my heart. He was right. I had felt like a jerk for weeks, but hadn’t been entirely sure how to change. The person I’d become, who had been mostly acceptable and even lovable at school, was now viewed as mean and closed-minded at home.

I ran to the shower and cried.

Suddenly, staring me in the face, was the multitude of my flaws. I blazed a hundred new trails of neurons just trying to find a way to fix things, to make my problems someone else’s fault, or at least make myself lovable in the midst of them. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t find a way out. There was no going to back to the way things were.

I laid in my bed that night, still thinking, trying to grasp some wisp of rationality. The words of my friend Abbey, who had brought me to church and preached the gospel to me every week during the semester, came floating back to me: “Jesus loves you even when you’re a mess.” She claimed this was all I needed, but I was not convinced. Through my tears, I told God that I hadn’t arrived at that conclusion yet, that I felt like I needed the adoration of people, too. I needed Him to change me.

A cloudy realization began to dawn on my fuzzy and overthinking brain: Humility was not a virtue I would ever arrive at while holding my pride intact. That may seem like a no-brainer, but my flesh and the Spirit in me fight for different things. I would have to let go of one to have the other. As long as I was consumed with my own comfort and reputation, I wouldn’t have room to be at peace with God’s comfort and identity for me. To settle into all He had for me, I would have to forfeit my striving to gain it on my own.

I would like to tell you that I melted into the arms of the Father and let Him take all of the weight from me. I would like to tell you that I became an angel overnight and the next day I was so secure in His love that I could love everyone else perfectly. I would like to tell you that I found the peace I’d been searching for.

But I didn’t. I haven’t. I’m still a moody mess, and still struggling not to be a jerk, and still worried about all the gross parts of me that rear their ugly heads and make life hard for everyone close to me. The good news of God’s work in me is not that all sin in me instantly ceases and I am made perfect. It’s that even in my sin, God desires relationship with me. He is all that I need, not Him plus a mess-free life.

There is no nice, tidy ending to this story, not this side of heaven. Humility is not a destination I will arrive at, but an action I will choose. Or not, as the case may often be. But Jesus was humble enough to cover me and He wants me more than He wants my virtue. I can move forward knowing the gospel is true, no matter how long it takes for me to look like Jesus.