Becoming Virtuous

Growing up, I never understood the stereotype that when women had a problem they only wanted someone to listen, they didn’t want solutions. Why would someone not want help when facing a problem? Thus, I would never bring up anything to anyone unless I respected them and wanted their input.

Then I started to see a shift in myself the last couple of years. More and more, I wanted people to just commiserate with me rather than offer up advice. This was so antithetical to the first nearly three decades of my life. What changed? After weeks of half-hearted, occasional pondering, this morning it hit me—like a sucker punch to the stomach.

For me, the issue is humility. My posture has changed, and right now I find myself wanting people to only validate my emotions in a difficult situation. I don’t want to be under the scalpel of godly wisdom, to hear what I’ve done to contribute to the problem, how I’ve sinned against God and others. I don’t want solutions, because then that makes me responsible to make changes instead of wallowing in self-pity. Basically, I’ve been avoiding responsibility. How pathetic, right?

But more importantly, this posture of pride and self-absorbed pity has hindered my relationship with God.

It takes massive amounts of humility to accept correction, from God or people. Today I’m praying that God would give me that humility and courage to submit to that scalpel and to face that rebuke, instead of cowardly hiding and seeking pity.

And I’m sharing in case this peek into how God is convicting me might encourage someone else.