Lessons Learned :: Humility

So I'm gonna piggy back on yesterday's post about Kennedy and Romans and how I am a crummy person who blows it often...even though going back to read through it again made it seem like I was tooting our horn about teaching our kids about Godly living. I wasn't. I promise. It's an expectation from God's Word. A holy mandate. Not something to do or not to do. I wonder if it came across that way to y'all. My whole point is that we have little to toot our horns or anything else about. I'm ugly. Ugly, ugly down deep. I'm just being honest. And it scares me to death to put it out there. To admit it. But really, you already knew, didn't you? I mean surely, at least sometimes, you're ugly too.

This ugliness, depravity, self promotion and self preservation surfaces at the most unexpected times. Take a few days ago as an example, I had gone to a consignment sale at our church {I found Joel the cutest pirate outfit! Adorable. And some stuff for the girls too!} with Tara and we are in line checking out. I realize that I have no cash. At all. But whew. They take a check. So I write the check and the nice lady looks at it and goes, "OMGosh. You're Kam *^*%&^*(." I'm kinda taken aback. This has never happened to me before where someone recognizes my name.

"Yep, that's me. Do I know you?"

"No, but I want you to take my kids pictures!"

Turns out, she's a good friend of a friend of mine. A fellow adoptive mama with a pretty incredible story of God's provision. She says she wants to have coffee and chat. Love it.

But can I be honest? For a split second, my head kinda grew a bit. And then about 2.7 seconds later, when she began to tell me why she knew of me and how the Lord had provided for their adoptions in a way that only He can do...I stood there so humbled. But worse than that, convicted. Really, really convicted. I had let my desire for glory overshadow and supersede my desire for Him to receive glory.

Yuck.

That is ugly. Just plumb dumb ugly.

It's not that this happens all the time. But even once is too much. Once breaks my heart. It's more than once...but this has only happened this time. And I know that we all do this in some way or another. We want our way above His or we want to take credit for something that He enabled or led or provided the means for us to accomplish. Something that in and of ourselves, we would have failed miserably doing. But we still take it. We take the accolades or glory for ourselves.

Again, to steal Joel's word, eeewww.

The thing is, I love photography. But I'm still so green at it. I have so far to go and so much to learn. And I truly believe, He gave me this love for it and any ability I have is meant only to honor Him and encourage others. So for me to have this moment of conceit is heartbreaking to me. I hope it never shows its ugly head again. Because I know me. I know how many bad pictures I take compared to how many good ones there may be. I know that arrogance is the opposite of humility and Jesus is the embodiment of humility. I have been teaching through Philippians this summer with our 7-8th grade girls in Sunday School. It's been so fun. Diving into that book is just such a joy. Last week, we dissected Philippians 2:3.

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves.

We learned that the definition of conceit...is empty glory. Wow. Did you catch that? Man, they hit that on the head. Any glory, for anyone other than Jesus, is EMPTY. And y'all, this thing came out of nowhere. It's not like I walk around thinking that I'm a good photographer. I am cautious to use the term at all in conjunction with myself because there are real photographers out there. And I'm not kidding myself, I'm not one of them. It was just the moment of acceptance that I was attracted to and ultimately fell prey to. It's not that I think I'm good...it's that someone else did. Now how sad is that? In that moment, my self worth was wrapped up in a complete stranger wanting me to take pictures for her. How sad.

Like I said, it came out of nowhere...this realization that I was esteeming myself high because someone else validated me. I hadn't considered it before. I knew I had a need for acceptance...but not necessarily in this way. It was buried deep in that ugly, nasty part of me that I never want anyone to know about. So I repented and am asking the Lord to clean my heart up. Because if this was there and surfaced so unexpectedly and quickly, there's a bunch more yuck down in there to be dealt with.

He is beautiful and worthy, I am wretched and ugly in and of myself. But praise God! We don't stay that way. Oh, how sweet the Holy Spirit to convict us. Like Kennedy, I'm still in training and have a long way to go! To God be the glory, great things He has done.