Humility

In Relief Society today we talked about H. David Burton’s talk “Let Virtue Garnish Thy Thoughts”. First, we discussed the meaning of “garnish” which I thought had a good analogy. When we think of garnish we think: making something pretty or better, nicer. We also think of the government “garnishing” our wages and taking our money away. Both of these fit nicely – when we garnish our thoughts with virtue we make our thoughts better, nicer, pleasing to the Lord. We also allow virtue to take away those things that shouldn’t be there. A great analogy I think.

We discussed many virtues during the lesson. Our teacher made cards with a virtue listed on each one and we passed them around and took one with the assignment that we would discuss what we can do better about our virtue or how we can teach it to our children. The overwhelming response to how we can teach our virtues to our children is through our example. It is the best way, we think, that we can teach our children. As they see us do, they will hopefully do, as long as what we are doing is good and virtuous. This is, after all, how Christ taught us. He gave us his example and then bade us to follow Him.

My virtue was humility. It is something I think that I have been struggling with. I told Alan today about our lesson and the virtue I had chosen. He said – “you don’t have any problem with that. You’re plenty humble about your own abilities.”

I suppose that’s true but there is a different aspect to humility that I am bad at. I have a hard time when it comes to accepting some things that other people do or don’t do. I can see someone or ask for something from someone and not understand when they say, “no, I can’t do that” or “I don’t have the time, I’m too busy.” I have found myself upset at people who won’t do some things that I feel they ought to be able to do. Mostly things pertaining to service in the church. To me, I am putting forth a lot of effort. My family makes sacrifices so I can fulfill my callings or go and help others. When I ask the same of other people it’s hard to hear “sorry, no.” That’s where my need to be humble comes to play. I go home later and fume a bit or turn it over in my head and wonder why it is that I can do all that I am doing but they can’t? Why is that? I look at people and think that they should have the ability to do more. They’ve made the same promises I have. So what’s so hard?

Case in point, it has always been difficult for me to understand why it’s so hard to get people who claim to love music and claim to enjoy singing to come to choir. Their issues are that the time I hold choir doesn’t mesh well with their schedule or they’re too busy, or it’s nap time. What’s their schedule? Lunch at grandma’s? Really? You can’t work that out with grandma? Or those who won’t get up early enough to come to church an hour early. Mind you that church starts for us at 10:00. An hour early would be 9:00. Why is that too hard? You see me come in with my four young kids. All of our choir members have mostly teenage or grown kids or none at home at all. Plus, I grew up where church started at 9:00 so it was just amazing to me that people thought 9:00 rehearsal was too early. I need more humility here.

(I do have to say that I am grateful for the dedicated choir members who clearly, truly love music and do their best to be there. They are a mighty few.)

Then there are people who I absolutely know (I think) are not doing all they can. They make excuses or put on a front for others to see. I tend to judge them and get frustrated. Sometimes I know too much about someone and so it make it easy for me to judge. Doesn’t mean I’m right.

Case in point. I felt so bad today when I had an outburst outside church after Alan told me that a particular person wanted to come home teach us today (our schedule wasn’t open anyway but that’s beside the point). We had a home teacher that we loved who had been coming to our home for several years. Since Gabby was newborn. I think even since we moved into the ward. He has done so much for our family and has been a tremendous home teacher. He always brought a hands-on lesson for the kids to participate in. He’s helped to administer to us when we were ill and particularly to me during sad and hard pregnancies. His family helped us when we were in need of care for our children. We were spoiled I suppose. Then we got a new Elder’s Quorum president and we lost our home teacher. Replaced by grandpa. Maybe someone would think it’s cool that grandpa gets to be their home teacher but really I’m not excited about this. This is where I need to be more humble again. There are things that trouble me with him. There are things I don’t trust. Nothing hugely bad but these issues are family issues. How do we differentiate between family business and home teaching? Anyway, my terrible outburst was that I objected to him being our home teacher. I felt bad about saying it almost immediately. I wasn’t being humble or charitable (another thing I need to work on).

So, humility isn’t just being humble in your own abilities. It’s also being humble about the abilities of others. It’s being humble about the actions of others. It’s being humble in your reactions to others. I need to be careful of this or I could hurt someone.

To be humble in this way your are accepting the fact that everyone has failings (including yourself). You accept that there is no way you know exactly what is going on in their lives. You aren’t living their life just as they aren’t living yours. And you accept the fact that everyone has their agency.

And you respect that.

Obviously I don’t live the lives of those choir members who complain about the time. Or a pianist who doesn’t show.

I also don’t know what it is that grandpa needs by being our home teacher. But maybe he needs us and our family’s example more.

Maybe he even has something to offer us.

I don’t know. But what I do know is I need to be more humble. Have more humility in the way I react to people before I hurt someone.

And if I react badly, it doesn’t mean I don’t love them. I just need to work out the kinks in my own soul. One of the hardest things for me is when I realize I’ve hurt someone. It’s the last thing I want to do. So if I ever did, I’m sorry. I’ll do better.