Pride and Perspective

When someone gives you a compliment, how do you respond? When you are successful, how do you feel? If you are like me, you try to word-smith your way around the compliment or downplay your achievement. My husband says it is the Midwestern in me, but I think many of us struggle with accepting who we are and being grateful for our talents and successes. Christians value humility; therefore, we go too far sometimes to run away from “pride.” We don’t acknowledge our success in fear of being prideful. Rightly so! We should be cautious about pride! The Bible speaks a lot about the downfall of prideful people and the success of humble people. C.S. Lewis even says pride is the greatest sin. In reflection of not wanting to be prideful, how do we show humility? In all practicality, what does humility look like? Does this mean we run away from compliments and hide the talents that God has given us? I have struggled with this for a long time, but I think this reasoning is the most helpful to me. What should we say to a compliment? “Thank you!” My friends, that is what humility is: gratefulness. When we recognize our own achievements and do not hide who God has made us to be (good and bad!), we show thankfulness to our creator. If you made a beautiful quilt, would you hide it in the closet? No! You would hang it on the wall or put it on the bed for everyone to enjoy its beauty or be comforted by its warmth. You would feel wasteful if that quilt did not serve its purpose. The same goes for us. Who are we to tell our creator that our talents, that He gave us, are to be hidden away or downplayed. The creation does not define itself, the creator does. Sew, the next time someone says you are doing a great job, say thank you, and remember to thank your creator too!

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness
That most frightens us.

We ask ourselves
Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.

Your playing small
Does not serve the world.
There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking
So that other people won’t feel insecure around you.

We are all meant to shine,
As children do.
We were born to make manifest
The glory of God that is within us.

It’s not just in some of us;
It’s in everyone.

And as we let our own light shine,
We unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we’re liberated from our own fear,
Our presence automatically liberates others.

~Marianne Williamson

Quick Quilt Tip: Right now, I am working on two quilts. One is colorful and fun with different blocks and the other is monotonous colors and repetitive pattern, that I am not enjoying putting together. Sometimes, we have the opportunity to put aside a project that does not fill us with joy, so we can focus on other projects that do. In most cases, I would urge you to do that; however, when a project is for someone else, we may be excited for the final product, but not the process. In that case, here is my tip: use the repetitive pattern as your leader in your chain sewing. If you don’t know what chain sewing is, here is a great article. In between my pieces of my fun quilt, I would sew two to three of my other quilt. This way, I finished 8 blocks of the fun quilt and over 200 corner triangles of the monotonous one. Another way is to make a realistic goal. Last month (and last article), I did 15min a day to trim up the repetitive blocks in preparation for the corner triangles. I would love to hear about your quick quilting tips and how you tackle repetitive projects!