Good Pride/Bad Pride

And they're off!

A phone call came through this morning from my sister-in-law's mom, who was on the phone with my brother and was conference calling me so I could be in on the action. Then she called my dad. Her husband was on another extension, calling my brother through his computer and holding the phone close enough for the rest of us to hear. It was an uber-complex multi-media event with a 4 second delay that made things confusing, but there you have it. Technology. I got to talk to my brother, who's in an apartment on a minute island in the middle of the freakin Mediterranean sea, so I can't complain.

What I can do is boast. No sister could be prouder. If you reference my friend Dave's blog, the post entitled "Ode to Ben Van Meter" is an excellent portrayal of what Ben and Jess are doing to chase after the desire God placed on their hearts. Spot on: http://davespeaks.blogspot.com

When they took off on Tuesday afternoon, I hugged my brother and said through tears, "I'm hella proud of you, dog." Not the most eloquent or courteous farewell, I know, but this is how Ben and I relate. We have the coolest relationship. I've heard that multiples (twins, triplets and so on) form dialects early in life that they use to interact - special languages they create by mistake and that only other siblings can understand. I think that my brother and I are comparable to twins, separated by four years, who didn't really form this camaraderie until our teens. But man am I glad for that bond. My bro is the illest. And now that he's this "man" who's all mature and responsible, I just couldn't be more psyched.

There's bad pride. Pride that says my family is something special because of what we've done for ourselves. Pride that compares us as individuals to our peers and sees successes and accomplishments or any form of superiority.

And there's good pride... which takes a good long look at God's handiwork in my family and says, heck yes, that's awesome stuff. My brother is a man of faith and godliness, not perfection, not success, not self-reliance.

David writes in Psalm 40 that God has lifted him out of a muddy pit and put a song in his mouth, and that he can't help but talk about how awesome it is when God does stuff like that. Mild paraphrase. I imagine that was a pretty sweet "good pride" - to look at a saved, anointed life and praise God for it. Or in the kind of lingo my brother and I would use, "This is hecka cool all up ons."