Day 21 – My lesson in humility

Picture a 2 seater-car and two passengers.  The inhabitants of this car are made of up of 2 people and I am going to refer to them as Team Camino.  Recall my nut angel Janet who saved my life a week or so ago by giving me her bag of nuts when I was so depleted.  She told me about how she calls her entire body “Team Janet”.  I loved this concept.  When she checks in with herself and her body she inquires about how Team Janet is doing.  I’m adopting this concept and calling the people in this car Team Camino.  One person’s name in this car is Trish but I will refer to me as I.  The other person in this car is Jesus or God or Higher Power or whatever works for you.  I’m going to call him Papa.  This is my endearing name for my God as it gives me more of a paternalistic feeling than other names.  One person is driving the car and the other is a passenger.  Someone is driving the car at all times.  

The car in motion represents my life.  I would say the majority of my life, I have been driving the car.  I think when my dad died, I asked Papa to drive the car to help me get thru the next day.  When my marriage dissolved, I asked Papa to drive the car to help me get thru the next moment.  When I struggle with how to help support/comfort my children thru an issue, I ask Papa to take the reins.  Aside from these moments, I think I have been in the driver’s seat for my life.

I do believe Papa would like me to willingly turn over the reins to Him and let Him drive the car.  Let Him direct my life.  I haven’t been able to do that yet.  As I walked today I developed this image of the car and decided to call it Team Camino rather than Team Trish.  With my name in the title, it implies I am in control and Papa is my helper.  I am referring to my name as “I” rather than Trish because “I” is hung up with ego and this story is all about ego.

Ego – the “I” or self of any person; self-esteem or self-image

I believe when I am driving the car, I think I know better than Papa about what I want or need from this life.  Only when life has gotten too hard to handle have I let Papa drive.  I believe Papa wants me to turn over my life to him willingly.  It’s that free will concept.  He’s not into slaves or prisoners.

So what does all this have to do with humility?  I think humility is being in the passenger seat and happy with it.  When “I” jump into the driver’s seat, I likely am a bit full of myself and although I might say I am humble about something, there’s some pride or ego in that humility because I am driving the car.  Or I could be about to crash the car as I drive it and I’m feeling pretty crappy about where the car is going.  At that time, I also might express humility but I’m coming at it from a deficit position.  I don’t think that is true humility either.  It’s more like my life sucks, I suck and you Papa are better than me but I’ve still got my hands on the wheel.

Humility – modest opinion or estimate of one’s own importance, rank, etc.

For me, humility involves deferring to Papa for the success and not letting any of it go to my head.  Recall one of my prior lessons is to learn to stay in the present and look at my walking just for today.  In Day 20’s post I quickly went from being a beloved child of God to “in 14 days I will be in Santiago”.  Boy, the lesson of staying in the current day went out the window didn’t it.  That is my ego talking.  Maybe I will make it to Santiago.  Maybe I won’t.  I walked today and tomorrow, God-willing, I will be walking again.

I will be chewing on this car story more as well as humility.  Wrapped up in both of them is staying in the present.  My favorite color is yellow so that is the color of the two-seater car in my story.  What color is your car? Who is driving?

Traumatized toes: 2

Blister – a new one on the edge of my old left heel blister; its small and I treated it so I am good

Pizza desire – still there but I had an amazing smash burger today so I’m happy

Stories – I have 3 stories to tell soon about lost items while walking the Camino

Buen Camino