Prideful

Prideful

Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves.

LISA IS ONE OF the most compassionate people I know. So much so, in fact, that sometimes she gets stuck in a thought vortex—stuck on wondering whether she did or said the wrong thing, certain that another person’s upset is because of her.

When we automatically, always assume that our words or our actions are the reason why another is upset, we put ourselves at the center of their story, at the center of their universe, uninvited and often unfairly. We all do or say things that, at times, hurt or anger another, but my tenderhearted, compassionate friend Lisa (and people, like her, who are deeply empathic and compassionate) works from the default that anytime anyone is hurt or upset around her, it is because of her. And that is both presumptuous and prideful.

That sounds harsh, but it is true. Lisa doesn’t have a prideful bone in her body, not in the ways we generally define it. But her tendency to get stuck in the mental vortex insisting that she must be the cause of another’s pain is a different kind of pride, and Satan uses it to tie her up in knots, us in knots. If we’re tied, we’re less effective for the Kingdom of God. It’s that simple, and Satan is that tricky.

How do we escape the vortex, the knot tying? When we can, we ask the upset person what is wrong. I’m surprised how many times I’ve secretly assumed I’d done something, when the upset had literally zero to do with me. When we can’t ask them, we ask God to show us if we did or said something that warrants an apology, and apologize when there is a possibility we’re at fault. And then we let it go, remembering that it is prideful to put ourselves in the center of someone else’s universe, refusing to give Satan a foothold in our thoughts, not allowing him to tie us into knots.

Lord, help us not to pridefully assume we are the cause of everyone’s upset. Help us to distinguish between the hurts we’ve caused and the ones we haven’t.

-Julie

One Good Step: When someone is upset, approach them with loving compassion and ask them why before assuming the blame.