I had an epiphany today while sweeping my kitchen floor (yes, sometimes they do bubble up during the most mundane tasks...) I was thinking about some recent events that turned out differently than we had anticipated (and I'll admit, sort of expected) and I got to thinking. Were we overly confident to the point that it had a reverse effect? Were we not only wanting but also expecting the outcome so much that we needed to be humbled by having it not turn out? It isn't a bad thing to have confidence in something good. Without confidence, we would probably do very little well. And I don't mean boasting-with-pride confidence. But can't it easily cross over into that? I know that if I'm not careful, it does for me. So, I got to thinking about humility and being humble and all of that, and that is when the light bulb turned on. Blink. And my realization:
It costs more to be proud than to be humble.
It may seem that the greater cost is in being humble: forgoing desires, exercising patience, enduring pain, suffering, misery, etc., but it really does work the other way around. We all know that God wants us to be humble. That is a no-brainer. We also know that he would rather us humble ourselves if possible, but if not, He is happy to do it for us. Now, it might sound a little harsh to say that God will gladly humble us, but truly, it is for our own good. When we are humble, we learn better. We love better. We are more forgiving of ourselves and others and we sin much, much less. Humility is the best state to be in at all times and in any situation. So when things don't go the way we hoped, even if the outcome we wanted seemed to be in our best interest, could it be that we lost out simply to learn humility? And if a wise and loving Heavenly Father saw that that was in our best interest, can we not learn to see it too?
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