Replacing Pride with Humility

 

    I used to think that pregnancy and motherhood after loss and infertility didn’t cause anxiety due to pride. In my own walk on this journey, I have tended to downgrade myself in my anxiety: I think I’m unworthy, I think I’m ill-equipped, I think I’m being punished. None of those lies seem rooted in pride. So I used to think, “I don’t have a problem with pride. I so often think poorly of myself while trying to navigate this struggle, so I’m really humble to a fault.”

But the longer I’ve walked this journey, the more I’ve learned about how multi-faceted the concept of “pride” really is. Pride isn’t just an unhealthy elevated opinion of oneself. The definition also includes the unhealthy elevated view of one’s importance. Regardless of why we have this view of importance, it’s considered sinful pride.

So when I believe I’m so unworthy and ill-equipped that God can’t extend a blessing to me, that’s pride.

When I believe that what I want is more important than what God wants for me, that’s pride.

When I believe the way something can be accomplished is correct and God’s way is wrong, that’s pride.

When I refuse to budge my opinion or beliefs to make way for God’s truth about who I am in Him, that’s pride.

 The motivation behind these responses when we’re in the trenches of loss and infertility feel so justifiable.

I want to be a mom so badly. Why won’t God give me what I want? There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be a mom! If God doesn’t want me to be a mom then He’s just being mean!

If we could just do XYZ fertility treatment, then I would finally get to be a mom, but we can’t afford it. Why won’t God just let us get pregnant naturally so we don’t have to worry about the money? My plan is obviously more practical than His.

I know God is punishing me for my past sins even though I’ve confessed. The Bible might say that He’s forgiven me and remembers my sins no more, but there’s no other explanation for why He let my baby die. I know I’m right- this is my punishment.

Even when our opinions of ourselves are so low that we ignore what Scripture says about us, we can still be tangled up in the sin of pride. And to me, this is the sneakiest trick of all from Satan. All that time I spent thinking that I didn’t have an issue with pride because I didn’t think very highly of myself, Satan was licking his chops at this hidden pride that was taking root in my heart. He could see an opening, an unguarded area of my heart, that he would be able to use to entangle me in a sin I didn’t even realize I was susceptible to. I thought I was so humble, even to an unhealthy extreme, that I didn’t need to tend to that part of my thinking, when in reality, I was just as prideful as someone who thinks they are God’s gift to humanity.

When we think we know better than God, we’re caught up in prideful thinking, no matter the motivation. And that pride can exacerbate our anxiety. When our anxiety causes pride, we believe we know better than God the way things should work out, the plan that should be followed to reach our desires, even the reason why something is or is not happening to us. For those on the journey of pregnancy and motherhood after loss, we’ve felt so out of control of all the things that have happened so far that we have made it a habit of micromanaging God in our prayers. Instead of submitting to God’s will and timing, we spend our pray time giving Him instructions:

If You would just allow this…

If You would just open this door…

If You would just provide this…

We try to direct God into our will instead of submitting to His will because we think we know better and we think we know what we need. Our desire to be a mom can so easily shift from being a want to feeling like a need. It feels so deeply rooted in our personality and so utterly unfulfilled that we may even believe we will not be able to move forward in our lives if the desire goes unmet. So in our pride, we try to boss God around, forgetting that He is the only one who truly knows what we need.

I’ve been there. I’ve felt the desire to be a mom so deeply rooted in my heart that I thought I wouldn't be able to exist if I never got to be one. I’ve struggled to see how a good God who wanted good for me would deny me the joy of being a mom.

I’ve also arrived on the other side, where God finally fulfilled this desire. I am a mom. And many of you reading this have reached that other side too- that’s the focus of this blog: pregnancy and motherhood after loss and infertility. But I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that that is not always the end of the story when loss and infertility are involved. Some loss moms never get to hold a living baby in their arms. Some women who battle infertility never see treatments succeed. What I’m discussing today is not a prescription for getting God to give us what we want. “Just let go of your pride and then He’ll make you a mom!” The journey to release our pride is about knowing we’re not God and we really don’t know what we need to follow through with His plan for our life. And being comfortable with submitting to God’s will, no matter where that leads, even if that leads to our desires being unfulfilled. Because when we let go of pride and humble ourselves to Him, we are saying that we know He knows what’s best for us, and any outcome He chooses will be good.

That may be hard to hear right now, depending on where you are in this journey. My husband and I are currently in the decision-making and planning stages of having another baby. We want to grow our family; we want our son to be a big brother. And so I’m finding myself in much of my prayer time fighting the urge to boss God around when it comes to the provision, timing, process, and fulfillment of this desire. I know that the outcome of this may be that God’s plan is for us to only have one child. And right now, that goes against everything I desire. I’m right back in that place where I’m struggling to imagine how a good God who wants good for me could have that in His plan. But that is one place where this particular journey could end and if I’m going to humble myself to His sovereignty, I have to believe that He knows what’s best, no matter what.

So if this is a tender place for you- me too.

The first time Scripture uses the word “humble” is in the middle of a very well-known tale: the 10 Plagues of Egypt. Egypt has already suffered seven plagues and God is sending Moses and Aaron to Pharaoh again. Scripture tells us that God is the one who hardened Pharaoh’s heart in order to perform all these signs for the Israelites to tell future generations. Really what this means is that God gave Pharaoh over to his own heart, because he was already unwilling to listen to God’s leading. Moses and Aaron confirm this when they say, “This is what the Lord, the God of the Hebrews, says: ‘How long will you refuse to humble yourself before me? Let my people go, so that they may worship me” (Exodus 10:3 NIV). 

Pharaoh’s pride had gotten so big that he thought he knew better than God. He doesn’t trust that God can take care of him and his people, so he refuses to let go of the Israelites, who have been slaves in Egypt and sustaining his nation for over 400 years. He’s already been so convinced of this that he’s ignored the destruction caused by seven other plagues! Moses warns him that if he cannot let go of his pride this time, the eighth plague will be locusts.

It seems that this may finally get through to Pharaoh; he directs his men to let the Israelites go so that Egypt will no longer be ruined by the plagues, but then he calls Moses back to find out who exactly would be leaving. When Moses tells him it will be all of the Israelites, Pharaoh walks his decision back a bit, claiming that Moses must have an evil plot in mind if he thinks he can take everyone. He only agrees to let the men go and then sends Moses away.

God will not negotiate with our pride. He won’t give a little if we agree to some of His will. It’s not even going to be His way or the highway, because really there’s no choice. God’s will is going to prevail, regardless of how stubborn we get about it. But we will avoid a lot of devastation along the way if we can learn from Pharaoh’s mistake and humble ourselves to God.

The destruction of the locust is so bad that Pharaoh acknowledges his sin and seeks God’s forgiveness to end the plague. God hears him and removes the locusts. But God also sees that Pharaoh’s prideful heart has not been softened, and he continues to refuse freedom to the Israelites, leading to more plagues and ultimately the death of all the first born males in Egypt.

I don’t want this type of devastation to be required in order for me to wake up to my pride! I want to humble myself to God’s will. What does this look like? The Hebrew used in Exodus means, “bowed down, become low, to stoop, chasten self.” We have to bow to God. We have to put ourselves below Him. We have to stoop our own desires so His can rule our hearts. We have to restrain ourselves and our pride.

This is so counter-cultural. This is so against our instincts as a human. Our animal instincts seek self-preservation and society tells us we have to work for what we desire. We shouldn’t lower ourselves to someone else’s desires for our lives, and we shouldn’t give in to someone else’s plans. But this is God we’re talking about! He’s all-knowing, all-seeing, and in control of everything! Shouldn’t we want to bow to His will? Shouldn’t we want to yield to His plan? Shouldn’t it be a relief that we don’t have to be in control anymore?!

Easier said than done, right? But something occurs to me about God hardening Pharaoh’s heart. If God gave Pharaoh over to his natural desire to be prideful, doesn’t that mean He can soften our hearts if we have the desire to be humble? We know that we don’t have to do anything in our own strength when it comes to our faith. We can rely on God for all of it. So we can rely on Him for this, too. If we have the desire in our heart to humble ourselves to Him, He will continue to soften our heart to make this easier to accomplish.

And Scripture tells us what our reward will be if we choose to bow to Him. James 4:10 (NIV) states, “Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.” 1 Peter 5:6 (NIV) adds, “Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time.” Humbling ourselves doesn’t mean our lives will be terrible, that we just have to give up every desire and sacrifice our dreams. It does mean that our desires and dreams may need to shift to align with God’s will, but it guarantees that, when we let God be in charge, we will be exalted according to His plan! God wants to lift us up! He wants others to see His glory through what He’s done for us, just as He did with getting the Israelites out of Egypt. But it will be according to His plan and at His time.

Replacing pride with humility allows us to submit decisions and struggles to God and just let Him be God. It allows us to take joy in the fact that we don’t have to be God, we don’t have to solve every problem, we don’t have to figure out every situation. I’m working on feeling relief at being able to let go of my pride and humbling myself to God. I hope you’ll join me. It won’t be easy. Our instincts will rebel. Society will think we’re nuts. But when God eventually lifts us up, it’ll be worth it.