PROMPTuesday #46 - Humility

So here we are with another round of PROMPTuesday. This week's topic is Humility.

Write a story about when you last were humbled, felt humbled by the presence of something/someone in your life, or lay prostrate at the feet of the universe and said “I don’t know what the hell I am doing. I will now surrender and let you take over.”

I am going to start out by saying that I read everyone else's PROMPTuesday posts first. And I must say that each person's post humbled me (and brought me to tears...at WORK...dammit)

People...Experiences...Life. All so humbling. Whether it's our children, or experiences that are good or bad, they continue to shape us until we finally get to the point where we say "It's not about me, it's about something bigger." I had this phrase I used to say in my late teens/early twenties when something would not go quite how I had planned...I would say "Just another reminder that the world does not revolve around Crystal." ha!

I'm humbled just about on a daily basis...my daily drive to work consists of two things...calling my grandparents and talking to God. My grandparents are these wonderful people that God put in my life almost 29 years ago, and I just started to really, I mean REALLY appreciate them in the past year or so. (I just deleted a huge paragraph, because this could go on forever). Anyway, my grandparents raised me because my parents couldn't (really long story). To give them even more credit, they are not blood-related to me in any way. They adopted my mom when she was a baby, and when she was 18, she had me...and my grandparents stepped in and raised me from about 2 yrs old through high school. They were the ones that paid for dance lessons, field trips, braces, medical visits, clothes...all out of their own pockets, with only a little bit of assistance now and then from my dad. And when I became a parent at 17, they became instrumental in helping me with the girls. I resented them for a long time...I thought they kept me from my parents on purpose, but when you're a kid, you're pretty stupid. I'm 29 now, and they are 77 and 75...and I just wish I could be with them all the time. I call every morning and usually after work too...I tell them how much I appreciate them, and how they didn't have to do what they did. They are right this minute watching my 11 year old because she's sick, so that I could go to work. They were at my house last week because my 6 yr old was sick. They do whatever they can to help me...that humbles me...but you know, it just goes to show they've already had that moment where they've realized life is not about them...but something bigger.

The second piece of my drive is my daily talk with God. I've been doing a lot of changing over the past couple of years...becoming closer to Him, finding out that He has a plan for me and taking steps toward that plan. How can you not be humbled by the fact that the Creator of the Universe knows you by name, knows the number of each hair on your head (and not just that you have 4,315 of them...but that the strand that just came out in the brush and fell on the floor was hair #2,324), and created you with a plan in mind? Yeah, we can mess it up, and we can choose not to to accept the plan...we can even choose to turn our backs on Him. But He loves us anyway...just like we love our children, no matter what they do. And I always make it a point to tell my kids when they get in trouble that I may not like what they do, and I may discipline them, but I will always love them. I thank God for his grace and mercy, that even when we mess up, he doesn't just write us off...but waits patiently for us to realize our mistake and come back. That's humbling to me.