Thoughts on Humility

I, like many students, had to read Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea" in high school. The symbolism used in that story was powerful, don't get me wrong. But the basic plot-line of 'man goes fishing' got a bit tedious for me personally. As a girl living in Suburbia, California my fishing expeditions were quite limited (i.e: never happened. Yup, never in my life have I ever been fishing and, after reading that book, I'm not dying to go).

One of the parts of that novel that I distinctly remember is when the old man is bartering with God for his life--he offers to do a certain number of Hail Mary's in order to get something that he wants (I can't remember if it's to catch the fish or just to survive...) and I remember being a little skeptical at that. Even at sixteen, I questioned that approach to prayer. I wasn't raised Catholic so I've never said a Hail Mary or the Lord's Prayer in my life.

But bartering with God...can you do that?

I haven't thought about that in YEARS. I mean honestly, I haven't thought about reading that book in AP English 3 in Mr Warren's class since I left that classroom on the last day of junior year. So why the heck was that what was going through my mind at 4 am this morning?

Waking up in pain is awful. I swear that physical pain gets about 10,000x worse in the wee hours of the morning. There might be some psychological research to back me up on this--maybe it's because you're so overly tired that your senses are just heightened? Or maybe it's because you're just already so upset about losing sleep that it seems worse than it is? I've no idea. But pain between the hours of midnight and 6 am is much more excruciating than any other window of time--which is odd because my broken arm, broken finger, and appendicitis all happened during daylight hours but I swear the pain pales in comparison.

My neck felt sore when I went to bed last night but I woke up at like 4 in the morning with my right shoulder, neck, and head all in pain. I lay there and tried to get comfortable, but I felt like there was this huge pinched nerve in my neck and shoulder topped off with a pounding headache. Ow.

Waking up in the wee hours of the morning is weird anyways. You never want to be too awake because then it becomes impossible to fall back asleep, but you have to wake yourself up to a point of consciousness so that you can distinguish between what you were dreaming about and what is actually happening. In my case, I had to make the distinction at 4 am that I was home at my parent's house and as not in fact having a sleepover at my best friends' girlfriend's house.

Trying to walk the fine line between sleep-walking and fully-awake, I went out to the kitchen for some Advil and an ice-pack to lay on. I crawled back in bed and was just in agony. I have no a clue as to what I did, but holy Hannah it was painful.

"Heavenly Father...I really need to sleep tonight. Can you please just take this pain away from me so that I can get some sleep?"

That's when I started to get profound and deep at 4 am.

This has to be one of the most common prayers all around the world.

I don't pretend to be naive enough to believe that everyone in the world turns to a higher power during painful sleepless nights. Atheists have their own way of coping, I'm sure. But at that moment...I would have read scriptures for 8 hours in the morning if it meant that the Advil would kick in faster and let me fall back asleep.

It was at that moment when "The Old Man and the Sea" flooded my mind and I suddenly had complete and total empathy for the old man. At our weakest and most vulnerable moments, we lose all of our pride and turn to the Lord with complete and utter submission. We will do anything that He asks of us if it means that we receive His help and His protection.

It's not bartering at all. It's humility.

Martin Luther, the Reformist who nailed his 95 Theses on the door of the Catholic church, had a similar experience. When traveling through a lightning storm, he swore to become a monk if the Lord would spare his life. There are many men who fought in wars overseas who came home and devoted their life to God or became baptized into different denominations of churches for the very same reasons.

"Why do bad things happen to good people?"

Because sometimes we refuse to accept His help and make the changes we need to make without being pushed. When there's nothing more we can do for ourselves, we turn to the only person who could make it better and we're willing to do whatever it takes to qualify for His help.