Sheer Hubris

There’s a moment at the end of the day when the commotion stops. When the whack-a-mole game of getting our kids to bed– and keeping them there– has been won, and the prize is stillness. Silence slowly descends as the baby stops babbling, big brothers stop talking in their beds, and even the dogs have curled up to sleep and stopped clicking their paws on hardwood floors. As the day winds down, I finalize things for the evening, making sure dishes are clean and put away, and that shoes aren’t lying in hallways as middle-of-the-night tripping hazards.

My mind takes this opportunity to go into overdrive. It seems when my body isn’t in constant motion, my brain feels obligated to pick up the slack. It usually begins with working over my to-do list, the appointments I need to schedule, upcoming events for our family members, shopping needs, and other mental load items that are mine to bear. But as I begin my mental checklist, I start looking further and further out into the future, and that’s when the what-ifs start swirling in my brain, demanding answers to a variety of possibilities. I begin trying to problem solve, and while it might start with things that require my consideration, it devolves quickly. I’m problem-solving scenarios that are highly unlikely. If x happens, then I’ll do y. If y happens, I’ll mitigate it with z. If z happens, oh no, that’s the worst thing that could possibly happen, and everything is going to fall apart and life as we know it will be over. These are the curses of an overactive imagination.

Sometimes, it’s not even my problems that I’m solving. It can be for someone I love instead. I see their need (or my perspective and assumption of their need), and I begin mentally working through what I can do. How can I meet their need, how can I fix their problem, what should I do? Problem-solving for others is what I was doing the other night as I folded laundry in the quiet hours of the evening. Who even knows where my train of thought began, but soon it was careening out of control, wildly running through my brain. As I picked up socks and searched for their mates, I searched my mind for answers to all of my loved one’s problems, and then I heard a voice in my head, clear as day, say, “The sheer hubris!”

Hubris: Excessive pride.
Sheer: Unmitigated.

There I was, trying to mentally fix other people’s lives, an act of unmitigated, excessive pride. Ouch.

The voice I heard was from a show I had watched the previous day, and God recalled it at that precise moment. The moment when I was overstepping my bounds and going through mental gymnastics to handle problems that aren’t mine to solve. My prone to worry nature isn’t just a trait reflecting my immense love for others, it’s a sign of my immense pride. A hard pill to swallow, but obvious isn’t it? Only one of us here is capable of meeting the needs of everyone I love, and it’s not me.

I’m the mom, the daughter, the sister, the friend. I am the encourager and the prayer warrior for those I love, but I am not the provider or the fixer. My pride wants me to solve problems instead of taking them to God and waiting for him to do it. Ephesians 6: 18 says, “And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people.” This is the verse that immediately follows Paul’s description of the Armor of God. It doesn’t say to put on the armor and run headlong into battle, it doesn’t say to suit up and go slay all of your problems, it doesn’t say put on the armor so you can go help everyone else. It says put on the armor, stand firm (vv. 13-14), and pray. Sometimes in the praying, God will reveal how he’s planned for you to meet a need, but sometimes the job is simply to pray and watch. It’s sheer hubris to do anything else.