"It ain't bragging if you can do it!" - Muhammad Ali
The first quote listed here is, as I've discussed before, one of the most abused quotes I've encountered in my churchgoing life. The center part of the verse--that one should not think more highly of himself than he ought to think--gets emphasis over the rest of the verse, in which Paul emphasizes his own humility and notes that everyone has strengths and limitations and the key to wisdom is to be aware of them.
I remember my grandmother (may God rest her soul!) admonishing both my mother and me not to start 'putting on airs' or thinking too highly of ourselves--"something's going to happen to put you in your place!" she'd always say. Maybe she was just trying to teach us both something about the dangers of pride, but oftentimes (especially with my mother) she would use it to 'teach her her place'. This is a woman who, when my mother expressed an interest in high school biology and signed up for the class, promptly pulled her out of the class and enrolled her in typing instead. "If you want to learn biology, I'll buy a chicken and you can stay home and cut it up!" she said. Ah, the 1950's...that golden age where women stayed in the kitchen, blacks stayed at the back of the bus, gays stayed in the closet, and anyone at the far right of the bell curve stayed quiet for their own safety...
My mother was never one to 'know her place'. She knew her responsibilities, yes, and she was an outstanding mother to my brothers and me. Not perfect, but nobody is. She pursued her love of science through one of the few avenues open to working-class women when she was younger and earned a nursing degree. She was an excellent nurse for more than 20 years, when workplace injuries took their toll and she had to leave the profession she loved. So what did she do? She sold insurance, stepping cold into a profession that was in the 1980's dominated by men and consistently led her office in policy sales. I remember visiting that office. It made the set of Mad Men look positively feminist in its outlook! She dealt with a lot, and came out on top. But she was never one to brag. Maybe that was because of my grandmother. So I'll do the bragging for her here.
My parents both came from humble backgrounds and both became very respected individuals in their professions. They had nothing handed to them; they worked their asses off. And it showed. My brother as well started with nothing and has done very, very well for himself. I am proud of my family!
And maybe that rubbed off on me too. It seems to be a family trait, fighting our way up from the bottom. That makes me proud, too.
Unlike my parents and my brother, I nerfed myself starting out. I started college in 1987 and through a combination of mismanaged relationships and involvement with an extremely fundamentalist church, lost focus. I interpreted Romans 12:3 (as so many people do) as meaning not to take any pride in myself or my accomplishments. Some people actually go to the opposite extreme and either take pride in their failures or refuse to even try anything at all. 'Know your place!' This isn't what Paul was saying, and it's not what Scripture ever intended. Paul also admonished slaves (which for his time was the majority of what we would call the blue-collar workforce today) to get their freedom if they had a chance. And it certainly isn't what Christ meant to communicate. He said "I came that you may have life and that abundantly," not "I came that you may beat yourself into the ground with false guilt."
I ended up leaving college not with the degree I wanted, but with the only one I could earn a reasonable GPA in within four years. But I didn't quit. After a year or two of working dead-end jobs, I found something I enjoyed that I could do with that degree. And a little bit later I found a job that not only took advantage of that skill set, but allowed me the opportunity to pursue my first love in the sciences once again. Granted, it was from a different direction than I had anticipated--public health had never really entered my radar screen as an undergraduate--but it was one that has been immensely satisfying to me and has allowed me to do some good in the world.
From the moment I stepped off the podium with my BA on June 15, 1991, I was plotting my return to the sciences. I tried to launch a second bachelor's degree in chemistry, but that proved to be untenable. So I took what I had and parlayed it into alternate opportunities--first a job handling radioactive waste, then a number of tutoring jobs after hours when I ended up in retail sales, and finally as a lab technician at a state university campus. That job would have been satisfying to me in 1993, but it was not to be. The position was cut due to budget cutbacks, and I found myself looking for something else.
So I took my history degree, responded to an ad on my then-girlfriend's dorm bulletin board, and three months later I was a paralegal. I had the further good fortune to end up working with some of the elite operators in San Diego's legal community at the time, who provided me with backup when one employer stiffed me on my wages as well as some very nice letters of reference which led to the job I have today.
That job led me back to the sciences. Even starting out as a file clerk the extra college courses in chemistry and math were useful around the office, and I quickly learned about the field of quality assurance. Intrigued, I took a few courses at the local community college and decided QA was what I was looking for all along.
It would be nice to say that I went from there and got my Masters degree straight out, but it didn't happen that way. A broken engagement followed by a serious car accident slowed my plans down considerably. By the time I was able to get back in the game, I met someone who was very skeptical of my plans at first but has since become my greatest champion, without whom I could accomplish nothing.
I managed to talk her around to restarting my Masters degree again. It wasn't easy, and I know she's been frustrated a lot of the time by the demands it has made on me, but we're almost there! Along the way we've adopted two very special children. Parenthood takes its toll on anyone, but parenting special-needs kids is a challenge in a class by itself.
To top that off, just before I was ready to finish the first draft of my thesis I had a severe concussion that disrupted my research. Sandy's mom got very ill; my father passed away suddenly; then Sandy's mom passed away shortly afterward; and then my mother moved away to live with my brother because she couldn't live on her own.
There were times I lost hope. That I was ready to quit because it seemed as though the universe itself was acting against me. My grandmother was right: something had happened to put me down to size. Tall Poppy Syndrome was in action. But then I remembered something else I once read: fate is what happens when you don't fight for your destiny! My father kept his eyes on the prize the whole time he was getting shot at in the jungles of Southeast Asia; what has happened to me that could possibly compare to that?
I have my father's Bible in a display case at home, turned to a very weather-worn page showing Psalm 23. The cover is also worn where he held it for long periods of time. A librarian friend of mine tells me I could probably get the cover restored, but I won't. Just the condition of that one page and the cover tells me volumes about what he was experiencing. His faith got him through something much, much worse than I am ever likely to experience. Was mine insufficient when faced with, what is in the end, the usual challenges of life?
That was what Paul was talking about in Romans 12:3! He was talking about not becoming full of yourself, not denying yourself confidence in your abilities. Paul himself could list some exhaustive credentials. So can I: check out my LinkedIn page sometime. What he's saying is that God gives us all gifts, and not to regard our gifts as better than anyone else's.
Another friend of mine who is not shy about her own abilities (or quite frankly about showing up the incompetence of others) paid me a very high compliment when she said I should just embrace what I've done and stop putting myself down. Others have said that too, but sometimes you have to be in a place in life where you finally listen.
That place was the past three months for me. Taking advantage of available funds for training at work, I earned a Six Sigma Green Belt certification. It's not an easy test, and because of accounting restrictions I could not give myself as much time as I wanted to prepare. I had to prep for this very tough exam in less than two months, while squeezing in the rest of life. For the first time I was afraid of failing.
Well, I didn't...
So now it's time to start owning it. And more to the point, to start proving it. My father sadly is no longer around to see me finish my thesis. But my mother is, and I want to give her that. And then I want to move on to the bigger goals. Not because I'm better than anyone else, but because I am exactly as good as I am. No more, and certainly no less.
After all, it ain't bragging if you can do it.
