Pride and Prejudice, or Mainly Just Pride?

When I was younger, I hate to say but I was really prideful. I thought that I knew everything about everything and that I was "all that" as the kids would say today. Now that I have gotten older, I realize I wasn't at all who I thought I was. People are naturally prideful I think. They like to think highly of themselves and like to think they know things, at least that is how I have perceived things through interactions with others. We all want to be right and "in the know" and we want others to see that in us as well. 

In a marriage, pride can tear you down. When I first got marriage, I quickly learned it was ok not to be right. There have been times where we would argue over something and I would just say ok, even thought I knew I was right, but he does the same for me. For me, realizing that our relationship was more important than a simple argument was what helped keep things in perspective. 

We always hear that saying of walking a mile in their shoes, this totally applies to marriage but for some reason I never hear it applied to a marriage. By stepping outside of ourselves and looking at things from the other side can drastically affect our response to things.

My husband is pretty tall, he is almost 6 feet tall, but I am just over 5 feet tall. When we first got married, he would ask me if I had cleaned the kitchen recently and I would tell him that I had. He would then say that there were places that I was missing. It made me so angry, I had cleaned every inch of the kitchen, how could I miss anything. One day, I stood on a stool to get something off of the top shelf, I turned to get down and I saw there was a layer of dust on the ledge of our stove and fridge and cupboards. I realized that I couldn't see over the ledge so I had been missing those places the whole time. I thought that I had been cleaning the kitchen all that time, but he had a different perspective than I did. 

Pride can break things, but learning to over come pride can give you such a wider perspective on the world. I can still have my prideful moments in my marriage, but gratefully my husband is patient with me and knows I am working at it. Next time you feel you know it all, take a step back and pause and look to make sure you aren't stuck in your own shoes all the time.