Merriam-Webster defines humility as “the quality or state of not thinking you are better than other people : the quality or state of being humble.”
Humility has been pressing on my heart really hard for the past few weeks, and I was struggling with figuring out why all of a sudden and why my mind couldn’t shake the topic. I couldn’t understand, because I have never had much confidence and my ego was and is practically nonexistent. Humility seems to come easy to me and it always has (is it un-humble to say that?).
I sort of came to an understanding, when I realized that by what I considered being “humble,” I was actually just thinking of myself as so much lesser than others that I was feeling defeated and not up to par.
Having a heart of humility and a heart of self-hatred is much, much different.
The other day, I went to get my hair highlighted. If you’re familiar with the process, you usually don’t wash your hair beforehand because they wash it for you and it’s glorious. But on this particular day, I had just worked too many days to count before, and my hair was looking contaminated with dirt and oil. I also decided not to do my makeup, because I was coming straight from allergy testing and nobody does their makeup to get allergy tested. I was looking slightly grotesque, feeling perpetually sluggish, and smelling quite ripe.
As my hairdresser went back to get the highlight stuff or bleach or whatever ready for my hair, I stared at the unseemly, unkempt version of myself in the mirror with the awfully fluorescent lights beaming down at me, lighting up all of my blemishes and flaws for all the beautiful women in the salon to see. I looked at myself, my nearly invisible blonde eyebrows and eyelashes, my crooked nose, my two different shaped front teeth, and my various blemishes, and I felt an overwhelming joy brush over me. I saw myself as a daughter of the One True King, created in His perfect image, with no error in my design. It wasn’t the type of realization where I had to do a double take because I was in awe of how gorgeous and aesthetically pleasing to the eye I looked, or the type where I had to take a bunch of selfies because #naturalbeauty; it was the type of realization that I had been looking for validation in all the wrong places for so long. I didn’t have to turn away from the mirror to avoid looking at what I despised about myself for so many years. I simply saw myself as a fraction of what God sees in me every day. Songs of Solomon 4:7 resounded in my mind over and over in that moment.
“You are altogether beautiful, my love; there is no flaw in you.”
Now, you’re probably asking, how does humility tie into this whatsoever?
I’m not using this as an opportunity to boast of how God spoke to me in such a point of insecurity; I’m sharing about how God humbled me and pulled me out of a rut of self-hate, just like the faithful and just and loving FATHER that He is! I am learning that it is okay to be humble in my actions and in my words, but confident in my identity in Christ. My confidence comes from the Lord and my humility comes from what He sacrificed for me. He taught me that beauty is not only acquired by the lucky, and that it is so much more than receiving likes on an Instagram selfie, having eyebrows on fleek, and fitting effortlessly into a size 2. Beauty comes from within, and it reflects in all that you do. There would be no more excuses when looking at myself and hating what I saw that I was just “humble.”
My journey to humility has been a different one. Most people think of humbling themselves as bringing themselves down to earth and being practical. For me, humbling myself has been learning how to visualize myself through God’s eyes- no better than anyone else, but not a welcome mat to brush your feet off on before entering the house of self-loathing.
I praise God for all that He is revealing to me. He has so faithfully renewed and restored my soul! He continues to mold my brokenness into beauty.
On this beautiful, 55-degree Monday night, I leave you with Psalm 139:13-16.
“For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.”
Much love, folks
