In the Mud

Generally, I see myself as a humble person. But maybe, when we start assessing ourselves as "so humble," that is when we jump the fence to the land of proud. Sometimes I think the Lord puts things in our path as if to say " Are you really humble?" For it me, this happened 3 weeks ago today. I got up for the day, took a shower, even blow-dried my hair, and then put on the outfit that I had spent 5-10 minutes considering (from many other options). My Kenyan son, Albert, came over and after a long conversation, we headed out for some shopping. The trouble came when we reached one of the main roads for that area, which they were working on. I am not talking about a blacktop road that was easy to pass anyhow....this was a road of dirt...that turned into mud central from the rain. In order to improve the road, they removed some of the dirt and had huge mounds on the side which made it super tricky to pass by. My son, being 17 and very agile, passed around one of these first huge mounds of dirt with a confident, "This will be no trouble. Just follow me."

I bet you can guess where this story is heading. I, being almost 30 and certifiably clumsy, tried to pass by said mound of dirt in the same manner and PLOP!!!! in the mud I went. It was not graceful, it was not pretty,    I almost took out a child on the way down, and I found myself covered in mud on one side of my body up to my knee on my leg and elbow on my arm. As I got up from the mud, I had a decision to make in the moment: would I react with anger and yell, cry, or even curse or would I take it in stride, shrug it off, and have a good laugh? (Side note: My Kenyan son was so far ahead of me at that point that he did not even know I fell down. It took him a good minute to realize i wasn't behind him and he came rushing over to my aid). By the grace of God, though, I was able to react with laughter. I was laughing so much in fact that I kind of froze in position and could not move to go clean myself up back at my friend's house. 

Albert was struggling to know how to help me and decided he would go and get some water from a small restaurant across the road (which he sort of flew over, by the way, with out mud even touching him it seemed). As I waited for him, many passed by and said "sorry" and pitied my condition. I was able to say to them "Oh, it is no trouble. It is just a bit of mud!!" I think they were really surprised. The water boy came back and I cleaned myself up, rolled up my jeans, and continued the journey to go shopping. About every 10 minutes, one of us would break out into laughter and relive the event all over again.

I think we all need to fall in the mud sometimes. I am glad that the Lord reminded me of humility through such a circumstance. He was willing to humble himself by becoming a man and then dying on a cross. How am I being called to more humility? It is easy to be proud here if I allowed myself to be. My skin alone brings me a lot of attention and elevates my "status" so to speak. Honestly, most days I forget I'm a foreigner here but very quickly after leaving the house I'm reminded that I'm different in many eyes. But through my actions and interactions, I want to humility of Christ to shine forth more than anything else...whatever that looks like and whatever lengths I am asked to go. I want to set an example. I want to set a standard that is like Jesus' standards.