I’ve solved the Humpty-Dumpty conspiracy. There was no second gunman. No one pushed him over. Blind self-confidence was the nudge that sent Humpty-Dumpty over. He did it himself and has no one else to blame for his broken back.

I should know. I’m his grandson.

If you don’t want to end up like Humpty-Dumpty (or me) then you’ll want to keep reading these posts over the next few weeks.

I worked at a lumber yard one summer when I was in college. Customers often made massive orders which we subsequently loaded on forklifts and transported to trucks. There’s a trick to transporting twenty foot long boards on a skinny forklift: keep the forks low to the ground. One dude, a cocky, bubble-gum popping, drop-out, threw that trick out the window one day.

I was standing in the main building with the customers when I saw their faces turn pale. Their mouths gaped open as they stared behind me. I turned and saw a forklift loaded with lumber that extended to the left and right of the forklift by a good ten feet. He had those forks lifted as high as they could go, twelve or more feet, as he drove between the rows of parked cars. He was just trying to avoid hitting the cars, but the higher the forks, the more those long pieces of lumber danced.

We all saw the imminent danger. The customers certainly did, each eyeing his own favorite vehicle, but gum-popping employee was clueless. He eyes were fixed on the ground to make sure his wheels didn’t hit a car. His wheels! They were hardly the threat, but he had no idea.

It’s not flattering, but I’m just like that guy. I carry my load through life doing my very best to convince myself and others that I’ve got it all together.

I don’t have it all together. Not even close. But I’d rather evade the truth than face it.

The brief history of my life is the story of one guy’s search to maintain the illusion of independence.

I have gone to great lengths to assure myself that I am not needy. Even when life events made it clear I was a moth drowning in candle wax, I pretended otherwise.

There’s a simple reason for this evasion. Facing our limitations, our frailties, is humiliating. It’s not just our pride that takes a hit either. We actually feel bewildered during these frail times because it’s reorienting our vision.

And here’s the key take away: Those of us living the under the illusion of self-reliance throw all our weight into leveraging life for what we think we need. We think we need stuff. We think we need a change. We think we need the weekend. But we’re misguided.

We’re watching the wrong things, distracted by the tires when they aren’t even the problem.

The bigger problem is our own self-reliance. When we realize that truth, then our prayer life will change. The nature of our requests will change; in fact, our requests themselves will be almost an after-thought because we know that “what you should want most is God’s kingdom and doing what he wants you to do. Then he will give you all these other things you need” (Matthew 6:33 ERV). Our prayers will be more fitting to our situation. We’ll pray, “God help me,” because we actually need his help.

Remembering who we actually are (dependent), not what we pretend to be (independent), will shape the way we see ourselves, each other, and our day to day lives in important ways. More importantly, we’ll avoid the Humpty-Dumpty syndrome: we won’t get cocky on the ledge of life. How hilarious, actually, to just imagine his situation. He’s an egg on a wall. How helpless and small, but his imagination was too colored by the illusion of self-reliance. How embarrassing.

If you’re wondering about the dude with the forklift, you can rest easy tonight. He made it. He didn’t have far to go. I suppose that’s how it is. We might make it the short distance. We might. But the chances of disaster increase the farther we’re going. Life is long for most of us and we should plan for the long haul. Go ahead, jettison the illusion of self-reliance and see how freeing it is.

Coming Attractions:

Next week I’ll explain why the prayer “God help me” has come to be so important in my life.

 

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