Daily Prayer: The Slow Work of Letting Go of Being Right
Daily Prayer: The Slow Work of Letting Go of Being Right
"Before his downfall a man's heart is proud, but humility comes before honor."
— Proverbs 18:12
I was loading the dishwasher last night — putting things in the way I always put them in, the way that makes the most logical sense to me — and my husband walked over and quietly rearranged two bowls.
He didn't say anything. Just moved them.
And I felt something flicker in my chest. Not anger exactly. More like a tiny flag going up. I had a system.
I stood there for a second, hand on the counter, and then I heard myself think: Does it matter? And then, more honestly: Why do I want it to matter so much?
Pride Hides in Small Places
I always imagined pride as something dramatic. A person standing in a boardroom, refusing to admit a mistake. A politician who can't apologize. Someone on a stage somewhere, puffed up and loud.
Not someone silently annoyed about bowl placement at 8 p.m.
But Proverbs 18:12 doesn't say pride looks a certain way. It just says it comes before the fall. And I think that's partly because it sneaks in through the side door, dressed in perfectly reasonable clothing. It calls itself efficiency. Or experience. Or just, quietly, knowing better.
I've been thinking about how often I carry that feeling into bigger moments — conversations with my adult daughter where I have to consciously remind myself that she's not twenty-two anymore, and also that she was never wrong just because she saw things differently than I did. Moments at work where I'm absolutely sure I know the best path forward, and then someone else's idea actually works better, and I have to sit with that.
Sitting with that is the part nobody talks about enough.
Humility Is Not the Same as Shrinking
I used to think humility meant making yourself smaller. Agreeing when you didn't agree. Holding back what you actually thought.
I don't think that anymore.
I think humility is more like... staying open. Keeping your hands a little loose around your own certainty. Letting someone else be right without it costing you something. It's not weakness — it's actually a kind of strength that I find genuinely hard to practice, which tells me something important about myself.
The verse pairs it beautifully: humility comes before honor. Not instead of it. Before it. Like it's the door you walk through to get somewhere worth going.
I like that framing. It makes humility feel less like a consolation prize and more like the actual path.
What I'm Learning, Slowly
My daughter called me this week just to chat — no reason, no problem to solve — and we talked for almost an hour. At one point she told me about a decision she'd made, one I probably would have approached differently, and instead of offering my angle, I just said, "That sounds like a really good call."
Because it was. She's thoughtful and capable and she didn't need my version of it.
And something in that conversation felt like — I don't know — like a small door opening. Like a little bit of honor, the kind that's quiet and doesn't announce itself. Just the warmth of being trusted with someone's ordinary life.
I think that's what the verse means. Not trophies. Just that.
The dishwasher, for what it's worth, got clean either way. The bowls didn't care.
A Prayer for Today
God, I think I'm prouder than I realize most of the time. Not in a big, obvious way — just in that low hum of assuming I know best. About the small things. About the bigger things too, if I'm being honest.
Would You help me hold my certainties a little more loosely? Not so I stop thinking or stop caring, but so there's room for other people — and for You — to show me something I missed.
I want to be someone who's actually easy to be around. The kind of person who makes space instead of taking it up. I'm not there yet, but I think I'm at least looking in the right direction.
Thank You for not being finished with me. That alone is worth a lot.
Amen.
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