Pride

... is tricky. It's one of the devil's favorite play-things. The minute you think you have succeeded in getting rid of it is when you, again, find yourself in danger of having it. C.S. Lewis has some great things to say about pride. In C.S. Lewis' book, Mere Christianity, he has a whole chapter dedicated to it, and does he have some great things to say! I will admit, reading that chapter in particular, I could feel myself sinking deeper and deeper into my chair. Coming from a family where competitiveness is as prevalent a trait as having two feet, one of his quotes hit me pretty significantly:
 “Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man.”
Wow. Yeah, that is definitely true. When you combine that with Theodore Roosevelt's "Comparison is the thief of joy," there is some great insight to why people, why I, can be so miserable. 
It made me look at some of things that I feel consistently rob me of joy.
1. Times I feel like the only way I hang out with friends is because I invite them to do things.
2. Not getting to the gym as much as I wanted during the week.
3. Wishing I wasn't at Nova and could just be at Mason. 


Now these things don't just made me sad. These things are capable of taking away good, deep-seeded happiness that I had been accumulating all week, or sometimes longer. Why? Why should any of those things be able to do that? It's situations that don't have a simple answer. If you were hungry, and it was because you didn't have time to eat, that sorrow would be much less powerful than if you were hungry because you couldn't afford to feed yourself, and less powerful, still, than if you couldn't afford to feed yourself because you were working a low end job you were ashamed of. Pride so easily for me, and for others, becomes the root of the most terrible, and oftentimes untrue feelings. Shame, bitterness, hate, selfishness, envy- some of the worst ones in the book- very commonly stem from pride. Why does the first situation on my list make me so miserable? Because, if I feel I'm the only one initiating contact with friends, than maybe I am not as fun or as funny or as popular as I thought. Ouch. Why #2? Because maybe I will not measure up to my sister or my friends, or they will not think I should be working at the health center I work at unless I am perfectly fit. Why #3? Because I am embarrassed that I go to a community college and I feel like I have to prove that my intelligence is above the stereotypical community college student's. These may seem silly reasons, but, to me, they are very real. Sin does funky things with your brain. 
As with everything though, love changes the picture and offers a solution. Humility doesn't hurt, either. The minute I let my pride go as it pertained to my sister, Lauren, 3 summers ago, was the minute I lost the bitterness I had accumulated over the first 14 years of her existence. She became my best friend and (although I hear picking favorites is uncool), I love her more than I love anyone in the world. So! Lessons to be learned? 
1. Love my friends. Another cool quote from a book called Captivating, 
"For people to enjoy relationship, they must repent of their need to control and their insistence that people fill them. Fallen Man demands that people "come through" for them. Redeemed Man is being met in the depths of their soul by Christ and is free to offer to others, free to desire, and willing to be disappointed." I mean, how does it get any better or plainer than that? Gah. Love that book.
2. Love myself, in the person that God made me. There is nothing wrong with wanting a healthy, fit body. But wanting one because other people have them and so I should have one and no one will like me unless I have one and blah blah blah more nonsense is where the issue lies. 
3. Ok this one is a little more obvious. The bitterness I have towards my school is terrible and it makes me less able to love those around me on that campus, because I associate them with what I feel, is a personal failure. Humble acceptance of the path God has for us will always lead to joy. It opens us up to a world untainted by annoyance and frustration, and how good does that sound?


Finally, I just want to finish with two more C.S. Lewis quotes, from the same chapter. 
"...for Pride is spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense." Woah. Kind of scary, yeah. But! 
"[God] wants you to know Him: wants to give you Himself. And He and you are two things of such a kind that if you really get into any kind of touch with Him you will, in fact, be humble- delightedly humble, feeling the infinite relief of having for once got rid of all the silly nonsense about your own dignity which has made you restless and unhappy all your life. " Delightedly humble sounds pretty sweet. 
So! That's it. Lots of work and a coffee date with a high school friend today. That is all. Good bye.