Sunday, September 7, 2014

The Ultimate Acts of Humility: Transparency, Vulnerability, Surrender

For anyone who doesn't know, I attend Celebrate Recovery meetings. A guy came in last week for the first time and bared his soul to a room of strangers.

I was blown away by his humility.

First, it takes humbling yourself to even show up; then it's another thing entirely to open up and speak those things which you secretly wish no one would ever find out.

It takes incredible humility to come to terms with and admit that you're terribly broken.

This thought crossed my mind that night:

Transparency, vulnerability, and surrender are among the most humble of actions available to the human heart.

You can't be transparent without being vulnerable:


I didn't upload the video, but it is, by far, one of my favorite movie scenes of all time: there is a part of me that would love to do what Stu does, to come clean and admit all my wrongs, to be completely transparent, to stop hiding.

But I'm not sure people will like what's underneath, and I desperately want to be accepted of them.

And so I hide.

Having pastors tell you from the pulpit that they don't have any tolerance for those who struggle doesn't exactly help, either.

But back to humility: you can't surrender without making yourself vulnerable, either.

Jesus certainly modeled this when he humbled himself and was surrendered to his Father's will, to die on a cross (Luke 22:42, Philippians 2:8).

I also realized during this meeting that if I could've healed myself, I would've already.

But my wounds are beyond my skill to heal (if I even have any).

And because I'm wounded, I act in ways that hurt others. As the saying goes, "Hurt people hurt people."

This doesn't make me a jerk; it just means that I'm broken.

In my mind, I know that what's required is to humble myself and surrender to God, allow myself to be vulnerable and to let him in, to allow his love to transform me from the inside, out.

In my heart, it's another story. Oh, how many things there are to vie for our attention these days...

My heart has made agreements with where it believes it will find life, and so it goes looking for what it believes is "life" in things that aren't healthy (Proverbs 14:12, anyone?).

I know that my mind can keep my heart in check...


...but given a choice between chocolate and vegetables, in the moment I choose chocolate, but 20 minutes later when I'm sick to my stomach, I'll wish that I had chosen the veggies.

To quote C.S. Lewis,
The heart never takes the place of the [mind]: but it can, and should, obey it.
Even though we're emotional creatures, we have the ability to be rational as well; we just have to separate ourselves from our emotions in the moment. Not always -- or ever -- an easy thing to do, but we become the men/women that we want through the choosing in the little moments.

So here's to choosing God when it matters: when our hearts desperately need him, even though we may, in the moment, want something else more than him...