Today’s blog on pride is only being brought to you because I swallowed mine!

Hello there – I had ACL reconstruction 11 days ago and I am still on crutches, icing and elevating. For now I can’t shop, cook or clean. I can’t fetch or carry without significant discomfort and difficulty. Nothing. My surgeon has forbidden me to weight-bear until she signs off, hopefully in three days time.

In the past I might’ve tried to ‘soldier on’ but since I first hurt my knee in April, the Lord has been teaching me about surrendering my pride.

During a typical week you might find me taking a meal or running an errand for a friend, teaching a Bible study, hosting a home group, making dinner for 20 people (gluten free) or playing on our worship team. That’s on top of wife-ing and mothering and writing. I like to do. Getting things done is satisfying.

Then, like a needle scratching across a record, one sunny day in Vermont, woman versus mountain happened and funnily enough, the mountain won. Big time. The ski didn’t release, there was a pop, then another, searing pain, Todd from ski patrol and the rest is history. Goodbye ACL, hello physical therapy and then surgery.

We returned from Vermont and a week later, my husband left for two weeks in China. I still couldn’t walk without a heavy knee brace and a stick. Shopping and cooking and the school run were all possible, but quite challenging.

Then behind the scenes, conversations were had among my church family and meals began arriving, there were daily texts checking in to see if I needed groceries and suddenly, life was so much simpler. Then came the friend with the chef. Oh my.

But it did stick in my throat a little bit – I love to be the giver, but am not good at being the receiver. Then a not much older but significantly wiser friend told me to look at people’s hearts when they were given a job or delivered a meal. And that brought me to my knees. I saw love and joy.

It’s easy to pride ourselves in what we do – our jobs, our children, our relationships, our material wealth, appearance, you name it, we can get focused on it and before we often even realize, it defines us and becomes the way we measure ourselves. But all of those things will fall away with time, be that tomorrow or in a few years.

The only identity we get to keep is that of a child of God, and that’s the only thing we should define ourselves by. As a military wife I have caught myself taking my self worth from that role. It’s a slippery slope. Any identity other than child of the King will eventually lead to failure.

So how does that loop into a discussion on pride? Well, here’s the thing. Jesus was the greatest servant of all time with countless displays of giving, including His life. He commanded us to love our neighbors as ourselves, but if our neighbors never let us help them, how do we do that?

Jesus healed the sick, fed the hungry, forgave the sinners (a whole world-full, forever), cast out demons, and washed nasty, stinky feet. He is the ultimate servant.

But what if we don’t let Him? If we won’t let others help us in our day-to-day needs, how will we ever let Jesus in to fix our brokenness?

After being thoroughly spoilt in this season of recovery, I have slowly come to accept (thank you Holy Spirit) that receiving is also an act of service. It’s giving someone else the gift of being able to give.

I love lessons that can be learned when people bring you cupcakes and Starbucks, cook you dinner, grab your groceries, play with your children and sit on your bed and pray for you!

To learn more about my military wives Bible study, please do contact me.