My Biggest Weakness

When I can, I'm joining From Mrs. to Mama in her 52 Weeks of Blogging with a Purpose.  I'm enjoying the chance to be candid about my motherhood journey and I hope to hear from you in the comments section at the end of my posts.  What's your biggest weakness?

Pride.  Big, fat, ugly pride is my biggest weakness.

It shows up in my desire to control things around me and in my perfectionism.  Pride rears its ugly head when I become more upset by how my children's disobedience made me look instead of making it an issue of their heart.

Pride has kept me from doing many things too.  Pride can keep me from doing simple things like having friends over for dinner when the house isn't perfectly clean.  If I let sin win.

Scripture often talks about the sin of pride and the beauty of humility.  Proverbs 11:2 says "When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom."  And we know that Christ set the perfect example of humility in laying down his life for us.      

Because I know Christ, I can lay down my desires and defeat the sin of pride.  God can defeat it, anyway.  I can't do anything that's good, apart from God.

I almost refused to sign up for adult league soccer with my husband, many years ago, because of my pride.  I didn't wan't to be completely embarrassed on the field when everyone discovered how lousy I was.

I nearly didn't follow up with completing the Couch to 5K running program because I knew I would stink at running.

I nearly didn't sign up for my second 5K because I knew it was such a small race that I would definitely come in last.

Do you know what happened in all of those circumstances?

I would love to tell you that I was wrong, but that wouldn't be true.

I was right.  

I do stink at running.
I was the last runner to cross the finish line in my second 5K.
I was embarrassed many times on the soccer field.

But I didn't die.

There are worse things in the world than being bad at something.

My husband insisted that I sign up for soccer with him.  He'd been an avid soccer player in high school.  After some bickering and after some prayer, I signed up for soccer a submissive spirit, saying OK, if this is what you want, we'll do it.  I was terrible at it.  I was terrible in front of friends at church who came to watch us.  I was terrible in front of students that were in my high school English classes.  I was terrible in front of perfect strangers.

And I lived to tell about it.

I made some really sweet friends out on the soccer field who saw me at my worst:  Trying hard but not getting it, sometimes close to giving up, and even irritated at my husband sometimes because he was good and I wasn't.  And many times, we all laughed at how bad I was.  I remember one game when we had a huge lead, and the entire goal of the second half of the game was to get Gabby to score.  It took several tries, but I finally got my first goal.  Eventually, I improved in soccer.  As in I wasn't as terrible as I was at first, but I was still a bad soccer player.  And that's OK.  And after each season, everyone would come over to my house for a barbecue.

Similarly, I'm not a great runner.  Even though I've improved since my first 5K, I'm still a slow runner who gets better the more I do it.  Still, I will never be the runner that my husband is.  But as I run, I learn self-discipline, a fruit of the spirit. I learn perseverance.  I learn how to conquer sin, especially my sin of pride.  That part of me that says I have to do everything perfectly.

I'm also learning to laugh at myself more and get embarrassed even less.  I know that it honors God when I submit to what He wants for me instead of trying to save myself from embarrassment.

My twin sister and I after I completed my first 5 mile race.  I'm on the left; she's the marathon runner on the right.

What's your biggest weakness?  Do you struggle with pride too?  

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