Hello Friends!
My team and I are in Penang, Malaysia this month staying at a Catholic-run home for kids who come from broken families. We decided on the first day that this will be a hard place to leave. I’ll tell you a little more about the kids next time, but today I’m going to talk about a key.
Just before we left in October, everyone was given a key inscribed with a word. Someone who had never met us prayed over each name before choosing the word for our keys. They say things like “Bloom” and “Wild” and “Free”. How cute, right? Mine says “Coach” and not only was my first thought “that’s not cute at all,” but it also feels like the set up for way too many jokes; put me in coach! The whole idea is that we’re supposed to pray about and learn what our key means to us and then give it away to someone else who needs to learn the same thing.
Here’s what I already know about “Coach”: It means getting my hands dirty with people as they learn. It means speaking into other people’s lives. It means asking people questions I might already know the answers to so they can own the answers for themselves. It means responsibility.
The worst part is that it sounds like me.
Those are all things I do when given the green light. But to take on that role and do it with excellence there’s another piece that has to be present: Humility.
This is what I mean by humility: It’s not about lowering myself; it’s not about becoming someone else’s doormat; it’s about accepting and presenting myself for exactly who I am, no more, no less. And who I am is who God says I am. I am loved. I am righteous. I am enough.
I feel like this is a lesson I keep learning; it’s always from a new angle, but it keeps coming around. I suppose the reason I’m still learning this lesson is because there are a few things I’ve come to see as my personal rights over the years.
I want to hold onto my “right” to speak, to share my frustrations with anyone I wish, to be offended – and I feel entitled to my annoyances and my self-righteous attitude. But that’s not what I want people to see when they look at me. We leave something of ourselves behind after every interaction with another person and that’s not what I want to leave behind; not with family, not with my friends, not with strangers.
I want to be able to speak into other people’s lives for their benefit and not my own. I want to see things get better around me, not because they’re always bad, but because they could always be better. And I want God to be the motivation and strength behind all of this. I already know it’s not something I can just will my way into. I still try sometimes, but it always ends with exhaustion. But the catch is that in order to rely on the Lord, I have to submit. I have to let go of all those “rights” and embrace humility. And it has to be genuine because when people let you into the most vulnerable places inside themselves, they smell what is fake all the better. The kind of genuine care that makes my little frustrations with a person’s habits or tendencies disappear can only come when I let go of my “right” to become annoyed and see beyond those things to the imperfect and beautiful person underneath who’s been created by a God who doesn’t make mistakes.
I think this is something I’m ready to start fighting for, not as I fight to be compassionate in one situation at a time, but as a part of who I am all the time.
