Step three to letting go of pride: Being teachable
This is a really fun part of letting go of your pride. To be teachable means to vocally and publicly admit that you don’t have all the answers, you get it wrong sometimes, and other people know more than you do. This is another one of those things that I just hate doing. I love having the right answer and having people come to me for help or advice with different things. So when I got sick the first thing I did was assume it will just get better without medicine and try it on my own for a little bit. Of course when anyone else offered their suggestions of what my illness might be or what kind of medicine I should be taking I didn’t listen to anyone. I was to stubborn and prideful to let anyone think that they knew more than I did about my sickness. I soon realized that I needed to turn to someone who knew massive amounts more about healthcare then I could ever hope to know and ask for help. That person is of course my amazing nurse practioner mother who told me exactly what I should do and when the doctor needed to be seen. She is one of the only people that I will allow to push past my pride and give me advice on what to do when it comes to illnesses. She is the person who I don’t mind telling me that she knows more than me and for me to just trust her wisdom in certain situations. Another lesson on being teachable was when I became a leader. It was definitely one way that God decided to show me that I don’t know what I’m doing most of the time and that I don’t always have the right answers. More importantly he was letting me know that he does have all the right answers and he does get it perfect all the time, and if I wanted to be a good leader I had to rely completely on him to guide me in every step I took. I had to trust him to give me the wisdom and discernment to deal with issues on my team.
These are just three of the numerous ways to check yourself in your quest for humility through the grace of God. All of these things I’m still working on but God is really using the last couple of months to hammer these topics in hard to me. The reasoning behind all of that was oblivious to me, but not to God. He was preparing me to walk through something that he knew would be hard for me to handle. Because of the things that had been happening in my team, in myself and with my new failing health; God spoke to my squad leaders and coaches about taking me away from my leadership position for a while. They realized that God was wanting me to rest and take some time for myself to replenish my physical, spiritual, emotional, and mental health. Leadership had taken its toll on me for various reasons. God had helped me lead my team through several difficult issues and now we had just been through the worst, with one of our teammates being sent home. It was extremely hard for me since it was one of the girls I had been closest to since the beginning of the race.
Now I was stepping down and letting one of my closest friends on my team step up into the leadership calling that God had placed on her life. I knew God had more to teach me with trusting him in the path he was leading me down, as well as more things with my pride and wanting to have control in my life. He needed to make sure I was completely broken before I could really learn these things though. After that debrief time when both these huge changes were made to my team, I walked through a lot of lies that Satan started throwing in my direction. I was in a spiritual battle and I was losing. I began to withdrawal from my team, my new leader, and the my friends on other teams. Worse than all of that I was rejecting God. The strange thing is, I wasn’t really even upset that I didn’t have that leadership title anymore. I was going through this battle because I was believing the lies that the devil was whispering in my ear.
Keep reading to see what happens next in my blog: Renewal of Spirit
