Pride and Humility

This morning, I lost it.

It was about 8:45am and I was rushing around trying to get out to Pete’s Bagels so I could pick up some of New York’s best bagels before my Moms Group.  I came down to the kitchen to find Christian, putting the clean dishes away.  Which was awesome, by the way.  What wasn’t awesome though, was the mess that was everywhere else in the kitchen.  Christian had asked to make pancakes that morning.  Which he often does.  But in the aftermath of his cooking and with no time to clean before school, dishes were pilled up in the sink, pancake batter was splattered on the stove and the counters that were clean last night were covered with measuring cups and pancake mix.

And I lost it.

“Don’t you know that I have my Moms Group this morning?  And look at this mess!  I had everything perfectly clean last night and now it’s all ruined!  You have no consideration for me at all.”

The words spewed out, all hot and angry.  And for whatever reason, I couldn’t get them under control.  My pride was raging.  How dare he make such a big mess?  And since he’s ten, he was angry right back at me.  It was pretty ugly.  All the way until I dropped him off, and he stomped off into school with a scowl on his face and I drove away, still fuming.

And somewhere between stopping to pick up those bagels and dropping Ellee off to her school, it hit me.  I was the one that was in the wrong.  Because though Christian did make a big mess, it was while he was doing something for others.  And he was trying to clean up but ran out of time that he would have had, had I not needed to get bagels for my Moms Group.  And if I’m being totally honest, not one of the amazing moms that comes to my group would have really cared that my kitchen was not 100 percent.

I was humbled.  And I felt terrible.  So I stopped at Christian’s school on the way back and sheepishly tried to explain to the door monitor that I needed to talk with my son.  She paged him and he walked down.  And I looked him in the eye and apologized.  I told him I was sorry for getting so angry and I realized he was just helping out.  I asked him to forgive me and he did.  And it was humbling, but freeing.  Afterwards, we hugged quick and I sighed with relief, knowing things had been made right.

James 4:6 says, “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”  This morning, I saw first hand how ugly pride can be but how beautiful forgiveness with grace can be as well.  I’m not proud of how I acted, but I’m so thankful that with God’s grace I was able to make peace with our son and send him off into a much better day of school.  Parenting is not easy, but I continue to be thankful for the lessons that I learn throughout the years.