I struggle with pride.
If you've met me, you probably know this.
And over the last few months, God has been kindly teaching me to deny my pride.
But I wasn't getting it.
So he stopped being quite so kind about it.
It's hard for me to really share my heart, mostly because I'm afraid of what people will think of me. I do not think that whatever I'm dealing with is worth bothering other people. And if I only share bits and pieces of my heart, well, then I can control what parts of me they really know. Dumb, I know, but there it is.
Despite that fear, I recently found myself standing in the middle of the University rec center, crying on my roommate's shoulder and unable to calm down enough to see straight. I started a five hour drive in near hysterics, and ended that five hour drive still bearing tear tracks.
Let's just say that this has been building up for a long time, and it all came flooding out at once. I had to be that overwhelmed before I could swallow my pride. During that five hour drive? I called four different friends, simply because I needed someone to pray with me, and for someone to know what was going on in my heart.
And, surprise surprise, God met me there.
Because if it breaks my heart, then it breaks God's too. And that is never anything but a BIG deal.
And by refusing to share my heart, I'm not only telling God that his heart doesn't matter, I am telling the people around me that I do not trust them enough to be honest with them.
Wow.
It's a problem of my heart. Of where my trust is. Of where I find my worth. Of my pride.
Because I think that I have more control if I pretend that everything is fine all the time. And that silence leaves so much room for Satan to convince me that no one wants to hear what I have to say anyway. That no one cares about what's going on in my heart.
Suddenly, I find myself believing that my friends love Jesus better, are better people than I am, because they do not seem to need to call me crying. That everyone else knows all this stuff, and I'm a bad person for not having all this stuff figured out already. And then that spirals into "I'm not worth loving, and I'm not good enough because I'm too naive, too proud, too broken, to selfish...etc."
I'm just now realizing all the lies that I have been believing.
So, I'm glad that God brought me to that place. Because all those phone calls? All that sharing of my heart? It was incredibly hard. But it brought all of those lies to light. And it pointed me back to Jesus.
Which is the point of community in the first place. And, again, one of the best parts that I have not been taking advantage of. We have hearts that feel passionately, and we are not meant to be alone in that.
It's a long process, and I'm still pretty bad at it. But I think I'll keep sharing my heart.
Not only because it is biblical, but because I realize the damage it does when you don't do it. And why it is commanded of us in the first place.
Because we aren't strong enough to do life alone. Jesus hardly did anything other than share his heart.
Who am I to think that I can love God by living any differently?
"For once you were full of darkness, but now you have light from the Lord. So live as people of the light! For this light within you produces only what is good and right and true." Ephesians 5:8-9
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