The Humble Shall Speak...

“Let your actions always speak for you, but be forever on guard against the terrible traps of false pride and conceit that can halt your progress. The next time you are tempted to boast, just place your fist in a full pail of water, and when you remove it, the hole remaining will give you a correct measure of your importance." ~ Og Mandino

There's a missing link somewhere between learning confidence and consciousness. If I'm self-confident, it's quite possible that I can see others and think I'm better than them. If I'm self-conscious, it's quite possible that I can see others and think they're better than me. Either way, there is too much of an imbalance. The only way the swing of my pendulum finally balanced itself out to perfect calm was the introduction of the X Factor into my life.

That X-Factor--or should I say, Cross Factor--was turning my life over to the only One Who has always maintained perfect control. I met Jesus on the floor of my dorm room, crying my eyes out. I thought I'd met Him in church, but there was too much formality for me to get to Him. I thought I'd met Him at the volleyball championship game where I played my heart out but we still lost...but even though He was there, I got angry at Him because I didn't win. I thought I'd met Him at military training, but I think it was only in passing...everyone meets Jesus either at basic training or in prison. LOL But when I met Him for real on a personal level, I began to see that the X-Factor was really HIS type of Humility!

So if I have God-Confidence, I know that regardless of the situation or circumstance, as long as He is guiding me, I can't go wrong. Even in the darkness, His Words gently whisper in my ear about who He created me to be. You mean to tell me that in the midst of all this debt, I still have the potential to be an investor and not a consumer? You said it, and I know You can't lie! Let's make it happen!

If I'm God-Conscious, I can look at others and see beyond where they are right now. I can see them in the future where they look much better than they look now. I can see beyond the sprouts budding now, but the trees and forests they are about to become!

So like Og Mandino, I guard myself not only against false pride, but false humility. The next time I'm tempted to belittle myself to make someone else look big, I need to think about the force of that water saturating everything that it comes in contact with and remember that if God created me, it's possible that greatness is inevitable if I lean the totality of who I am upon the vastness of Who He is.

Then the humble shall truly speak of Him and be glad that they no longer have to pretend that they are not who God says they are.

Someone pass me a microphone...I've got something to say.

The Seed

"Always seek out the seed of triumph in every adversity." ~ Og Mandino

These are challenging times for everyone; the Earth itself seems like it is in the labor and delivery room enduring contractions like never before. No one is immune from the pain. From people in Iran dying on the streets for the basic freedoms people in the United States enjoy daily to the stain of racism turning away over 60 innocent children at a Philadelphia swimming club, it is so easy to fall for the trap of fatalism and discouragement.

The labor and delivery room is an ugly place...trust me, I know. They make you strip naked and then replace your comfortable clothing with half a nightgown that leaves a terrible draft on your hindparts. Some doctors require you to get an enema so when you start pushing, nothing but blood and the baby gets on them. They strap you to a monitor to measure the contractions (as if they couldn't tell the baby was knocking a pause in your ability to breathe). There is absolutely NO privacy...the doctor pokes and prods in the most secret places to ensure the baby is in the proper position to be birthed. You are not allowed to eat or drink anything, no matter how hungry and thirsty you are. Your only vestige of comfort is the bed the doctors have you on. Unfortunately, even that betrays you as it transforms into a torture device that pushes your legs straight up in the air and folds you in half to make gravity do its job. I could go on and on. It can be a nightmare!

I said all that to talk about the seed within that time of adversity. It is a seed that develops within a womb upside down and inside out. It is a seed of hope; a seed of triumph! The seed that introduces us to an entirely new future is about to burst forth in our lives! The moment we look that seed in the eye, the focus we once had upon the pain dissipates. Even as our feelings, plans, relationships and circumstances are being sewn back together in recovery, nothing else matters but pouring our love, resources, guidance and energy into that seed that is now living and breathing.

I challenge myself and all those reading to shift focus from the immense pain to the incomparable future that awaits us once all is said and done. Even as an acorn falls from a great oak tree and dies to its small form, it fails to realize that one day, if it focuses in the right direction, a forest will come forth as a result.

There are FORESTS within each of us! I choose to look through the pain to see the future within it. What about you?