Until this moment, this blog was blank.
This blog did not yet exist. There was so much just waiting to be said.
And the weight of that kept this page white for almost a month.
I busied myself on the backend: coding, photographing, more coding, tweaking the color scheme. I found a whole month of distractions to keep myself from touching the whiteness of this page because writing something is the moment it stops being mine. It stops being about me.
Writing something is the moment I have to step up, in both courage and humility, to put myself down, both literally and figuratively, upon the page.
Courage and humility are the legs on which God teach us how to run. Not without stumbling, not without failure, but without those two virtues I am confident it is very hard to move in anything like the right direction, and it is equality in those virtues that keeps both legs in stride, for a disordered portion of one can often overwhelm the other. Too much “courage” without humility makes us brash and self-centered: eager to share without much substance or value to offer. Too much “humility”, on the other hand, in the absence of courage can lead to false humility, hiding oneself from the world out of the sense that there is little of value there to share in a mistaken attempt to be “real” about one’s value.
But in a well-ordered pairing, courage lets you start writing and humility gives you something worthwhile to say.
So that’s the prayer for this blog: daily courage, daily humility. Courage allows to embrace our beauty, take it up with confidence and joy, and humility shows us that all that is beautiful and full of light is only God’s. Growing in both, hand in hand, so that we can do the hard things without pride, and see our value even when we are not well received.
Courage is trendy, but humility is not {even if “Hustle Hard, Stay Humble” IS trending on Etsy right now.} Actual humility is the virtue perfectly lived out, as all virtues, in our Mother Mary. But humility didn’t make her hide. Humility didn’t make her reject the angel when He came to extol her at the Annunciation. Humility brought the words of the Magnificat to her lips:
My soul doth magnify the Lord.
And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.
For he hath regarded : the lowliness of his handmaiden:
For behold, from henceforth : all generations shall call me blessed.
For he that is mighty hath magnified me: and holy is his Name.
She accepted the job. She took on the role of exultation God gave her. Because “He that is mighty hath magnified me.” That is humility, really. It’s also trust and courage and all the other virtues, but right there in the bedrock it’s humility.
It’s humility to accept the gifts you have and live them – loudly –in praise of the One that has magnified you. The gifts aren’t yours. They are GIFTS. We are all like the servants in the parable, given “talents” that we can then invest and grow while we wait patiently for God’s return.
So next time a white space in your life seems like a weight, take a moment to pray that God will give you the courage and the humility to fill it well.
And to welcome you to this blog and invite you into the family I’d like to share this simple print with you as a small thank you if you’d like to join my email list. I email typically 2-3 times per month with uplifting words, links to recent posts, and special content not available through the blog.
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Thank you, sincerely, for joining me. God bless you.
