There are times in our lives when can look silly trying to prove a point. Illustration by David LaFata / Advance Local.
CLEVELAND, Ohio – I was helping a woman shop. She was in a motorized cart.
We were looking at the aisle with bottled water. Her favorite brand was on the top shelf – way up on the top shelf, as in “Where is LeBron James when you need him?”
As I put my two feet on the bottom shelf and began to reach, I heard a woman’s voice ask, “Do you want me to help you?”
I turned around. There was a young lady who could have taken me to the court, posted me up inside and scored all day. She looked like a WNBA forward, at least 6 inches taller than yours truly.
I was now on my tippy-toes, reaching up – barely getting a few fingers on the plastic 18-pack of small bottled water.
“I’ll be glad to help,” she said, smiling with a pleasant voice.
I was thinking, “I can handle this...I don’t need this woman to do it!”
I know....dumb...and sexist.
“I got it,” I told her.
As the words left my mouth, I had doubts. Major doubts. That shelf suddenly appeared to be in another solar system.
I reached up, grabbed the pack of water, and...CRASH.
TWO packs of water came crashing down, splattering on the floor.
“Male pride,” I said, completely embarrassed.
She smiled and shrugged, didn’t say a word. She helped me pick up some of stray plastic bottles rolling across the floor. She then went to the upper shelf, brought down some water and put it in the basket of the lady’s motorized cart.
Then she pleasantly said, “Goodbye” and left.
I stood there, thinking, “She is probably 40 years younger than me, and far more classy and mature.”
I’m going to use my sports background to look at what happened in the grocery store. As coaches say, “Let’s go to the tape.”
1. A lady in a motorized cart needed help reaching the water.
2. I was going to be a “good guy” and get the water for her.
3. The taller young lady saw I was really “over my head” trying to do a favor for someone else. She offered to do a favor for me.
4. I wanted to take care of it myself, because I was doing the original favor.
5. By turning her down, I didn’t allow her the joy of helping someone else – because I wanted to do it.
6. It became a big mess, all because of my pride.
7. She modeled grace and patience by helping the lady with her water. That also was a sign of humility on her part, because it’s so hard to ignore the temptation to say, “I told you so.”
One of the downsides of age is understanding there are things we used to be able to do...and probably should not do anymore. Or at least, take help when offered. As the decades fly by, there is a fear we won’t be able to take care of ourselves and others.
Proverbs 11:2: “When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom.”
It also means asking for help when needed.
I like this from Rick Warren, author of the “The Purpose Driven Life”: “Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it’s thinking of yourself...less.”
There is power in those words. If my real goal was to help the lady get her water, then I should have taken help when offered – especially when it was clear the angel sent to me was better equipped for the job. But I was thinking about me and how I looked.
This is not about beating myself up. It is about being realistic.
Joan Rosenberg wrote in Psychology Today: “Most people...are often raised with the belief that relying on others and asking for help is a burden to others – and makes you seem emotionally weak. Despite these views, there is ultimately very little that any of us do to succeed fully on our own, even if that is hard to acknowledge. You need both independence and dependence — not one or the other.”
There are many places in the Bible where Jesus allowed others to help him. Simon of Cyrene helped carry his cross. The angels comforted and fed Jesus after his 40 days of fasting, prayer and temptation. He went to many gatherings where people cooked for him. Jesus also grew up in a Mideastern culture that is more community-based than ours.
Christian author John Stott wrote: “Pride is our greatest enemy and humility is our greatest friend.”
Time has a way of humbling us all – but there is so much power and grace that comes when we learn the right lessons from it.
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