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One day recently I found myself standing in our pantry between the pancake mix and enchilada sauce, telling my husband as I choked back tears, “I just felt embarrassed.” (Or something close to that. You know how I am about details.) But let me backup and explain as most of my normal “pantry conversations” involve either: “Where did I put that?” or “Now what did I come in here for?”

Earlier that day my husband gently and tactfully addressed something I had done that morning. I thought I did a pretty good job hearing him out (not something I always do well) and trying to understand. That lasted until I had some time by myself. Then things turned south pretty fast.

I felt hurt and then mad. I began going through it in my head, rerunning the incident and analyzing it. Next I began scrutinizing his (annoying) behavior, preparing my rebuttal. Oh yeah, this was going to be good.

Jumping back to the pantry scene: I don't remember what I was getting in there, but I'm pretty sure God must have shown up about the time my husband did, because right about then I had an epiphany. My pride had gotten poked when my husband confronted me earlier that day. When I looked past that and the reaction my pride motivated, I realized I just felt embarrassed that I had messed up.

As I acknowledged and shared my new insight with my husband, my desire to have my “say” evaporated, and he was able to encourage me. Our day moved on without rebuttals, revenge, or a hurt ego because we were able to address the real issue as my pride was no longer standing in the middle of things.

God holds a very strong (negative) view on pride. As I look back on that situation, I have more of an idea why. Pride makes us vulnerable. We walk around with a very real weakness, as it doesn't like to be touched. Oh, I know, pride tries hard to convince us it's a place of strength, but it's not. It just tells us that so we'll protect and coddle it. Pride kept me from simply taking in my husband's gentle correction, making the necessary adjustments, and continuing to move forward. I got “hung up” on it.

Pride makes us susceptible to a skewed perspective. When our pride gets bumped, we see the situation out of its “pain” or other “feelings” it projects, blurring the reality of the event. Pride is vengeful and self-centered. If it gets confronted, it lashes out like a cornered feral cat. It plots and seeks to inflict pain, or it seeks to dole out what it views as “justice.”

Pride pits people against each other instead of making the situation the focus, where solutions can then be pursued and the problem overcome. Pride seeks to be “right” instead of seeking to be “restored.” This is clearly shown in the situation with my hubby.

We hear that “pride goes before a fall,” but that verse is often misquoted. Proverbs 16:18 actually states: “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall” (NKJV). Don't feel badly if you've switched the words around - a haughty spirit has to do with being arrogant or conceited. So we could say pride brings us down, too, in all actuality. But what I want to emphasize is that it DESTROYS. Let that sink in. God doesn't want us to walk in pride, and one of the reasons is because it's destructive!

So what's a girl (or boy) to do? Embracing humility comes to mind. Over and over again the Bible says to “humble yourself.” In fact it surprised me that it so often was worded that way. Couldn't God humble us? Sure He could. But knowing how sensitive our “pride” is, isn't it amazing that God would encourage us to do it ourselves first? I know I personally would rather have a go at it before anyone else gets involved.

If you're concerned that you may have some pride in your life, simply ask God to reveal it to you. He'll reveal it even when we don't ask sometimes. Ha! (Yup, speaking from experience here.) When you come across pride in yourself, you may have any number of reactions - disgust, sorrow, anger, denial, embarrassment, etc. After it happened to me a few times (Man, I've got to stop all these confessions.), I began to feel relief when God allowed me to see it. He only shows me hard things about myself to free me from it and help me become more like Jesus who is “humble and gentle at heart” (Matt. 11:29, NLT). The momentary uncomfortableness is worth the end result.

We can also do a little self-check and consider: Has someone, whether accidentally or purposefully, embarrassed or hurt us, and we thought we should return the “favor”? When someone addressed an issue concerning us, did we want to remind them of their shortcomings? Have we ever felt pleasure when seeing someone else mess up? If so, we were possibly feeding our pride. These are just a few things to help uncover pride.

Well, I'm back to standing in my pantry not remembering why I'm in there. While I'm trying to figure it out, if God spots anything else in me that doesn't resemble His Son - well, I know Him to be a gentle, loving Father, so,... Lord, have at it.

James 4:10 (NKJV) “Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up.”