Growing up, I always had a hard time with the many definitions of pride. We are supposed to have pride in our school and pride in our homework, but we should never have pride in our hearts. This quote by President Ezra Taft Benson and C.S Lewis has helped me understand the type of pride that the scriptures talk about "The proud make every man their adversary by pitting their intellects, opinions, works, wealth, talents or any other worldly measuring device against others. In the words of C. S. Lewis: “Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. … It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest. Once the element of competition has gone, pride has gone.” (Mere Christianity, New York: Macmillan, 1952, pp. 109–10.)"
Pride by this definition, is judging others and putting them below yourself. This type of pride has no place in our lives. We all grew up with the story of the Cinderella. Cinderella's stepmother is the perfect example of a prideful person. No matter how hard Cinderella tried, He stepmother viewed her as a servant girl. Even when she worked hard to get to the Prince's ball and she did everything that her Stepmother had asked her to do. Her stepmother didn't her perfect image ruined by having a servant girl with her, so she left Cinderella home in a ruin dressed.
Luckily, Cinderella had a great ending to her story full of love and happily ever after, but do we sometimes hurt the people we should love the most? Do we make the things they love important to us? Marriage should be a place where we feel the safest, where dreams can come true with our best friend by our side.
Are we creating an atmosphere where our spouse can come home and feel loved? My husband and I have just recently moved into a new apartment in Utah. A new place can bring so many new joys! New walls to decorate, new areas to explore and new ideas of where things should go. My husband's goal when we first got there was to make our house organized before he had to go to work. We decided that we would work hard our first days in our new place, putting everything away to make it feel like a home. We spent several hours to do this, and we still aren't done. However, our apartment is everything we hoped it would be! If I didn't share my husband's dream to have a beautiful home and he came home every day to an ugly un-organized apartment? He wouldn't be as excited to come home after a long day at work.
I believe the best way of removing pride out of any marriage relationship is both spouses working together on common goals. Here are some questions to ponder. What are some goals that your spouse has that you are actively working towards? What are some of yours that you haven't talked to your spouse about yet? Do have a bad attitude about something your spouse loves?
If you and your spouse can have shared goals and are actively working towards them, it can help prevent pride from coming into your marriage. Remember, the best time to fix a relationship is now.
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