Don't Let Your Pride Step into Your Provision

A true story about stubbornness, grace, and the doors God keeps opening anyway There is a particular kind of foolishness that lives in all of us. The kind that wears the disguise of wisdom right up until the moment it doesn't. I know this because I have lived it, and I am not too proud to say so anymore. Although, once upon a time, I very much was. A few years ago, a manager went out of their way to arrange a good position for me. It was a gift, really someone seeing my worth and making room for me. But then another opportunity appeared on the horizon, closer to home, and with a salary that made the first offer seem modest by comparison. I told myself it was practical. Sensible. Smart. I took the new job. Within a month, I was let go. I had done my work exactly as I was asked. But favour, as anyone who has navigated an office knows, is not always about competence. The women there simply did not like me, and that was that. I walked out of those doors and straight into the silence of unemployment while the first company, the one I had turned down, carried quietly on without me. "Do not let your pride step into your provision." But God and isn't that always where the real story begins was not finished with me there. Much later, that first company came back. They approached me. They offered me a position. Not because I had earned a second chance through some great act of humility, but because grace simply does not keep the score, we expect it to. This time, I worked hard and I worked well. I built a filing system that became something quietly respected methodical, thorough, the kind of thing that only reveals its value when someone comes looking. And when an audit arrived, every document was in its place. Every record matched. A perfect audit, born out of ordinary faithfulness. Looking back, I can see myself clearly now stubborn, self-directed, certain I knew the better path. I have always been that way, and I have always borne the consequences of it. But this is what I wish I had done differently: I wish I had picked up the phone. After losing that second job, I wish I had swallowed the embarrassment, called the first company, and simply asked is there still a place for me? I did not do that. Pride had moved in before I could, and pride made itself very comfortable. Do I regret the decisions I made? Not deeply. They were mine, and they made sense to me at the time. I have learned to make peace with the woman who made them. But if there is anything I want to pass on, it is this: Do not let your pride step into your provision. The door God opens may not be the most glamorous one. The salary may not impress anyone. The commute may not be convenient. But if someone has seen fit to make a way for you. I have found that Someone always does, do not let shame or stubbornness talk you out of walking through it. Life is short. Time moves faster than we admit. And God, in His quiet faithfulness, keeps making ways for those who are willing to stop making excuses long enough to notice. I am grateful for every door, the ones that closed in my face and the ones that opened again. Both had something to teach me. Both were part of the story. Embrace your life. Live it as fully and as honestly as you can. And when grace comes knocking a second time, let it in.