"Jill and Jessa: Counting On" star Ben Seewald, husband of Jessa Duggar, says he learned a valuable lesson about pride when he was still a teenager playing football.
Seewald recalls how overconfident he was about his athletic skills. He was especially looking forward to their team's game against Southwest, because it was "a chance to prove ourselves against a highly favoured opponent."
"I was starting at quarterback and this was my first opportunity to play football on a league. I was 17, a homeschooled senior, and taking some courses at the local community college," he writes on his blog. "This was the closest thing to the fulfillment of my life-long dream of playing college football. In my youthful pride, I walked from class to class on the community college campus thinking to myself, 'I am a student-athlete.' I loved the sound of that."
But when the day of the game finally came, Seewald was surprised that he did not do so well. In fact, he even humiliated himself on the field while trying to outdo his opponents.
Seewald chased after the Southwest defender who intercepted his pass, wanting him to at least fumble. But when Seewald dove after him, the defender simply moved away and "he waltzed into the end-zone for the score." As for Seewald, he landed face down in humiliation.
"I slowly got up and there was the linebacker rubbing it in a bit with a 'How about that?' gesture. I shook my head and looked down. 'I deserve this,' I thought. I remembered Proverbs 16:18, 'Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall,'" he recalls.
Right then and there, Seewald felt God convicting his heart. What Seewald did in that football field wasn't Christ-like, since he was playing for his own glory and not God's.
"This is a lesson I am still learning each day. I have by no means arrived, but I will always look back on that pick-six against Southwest as God using adversity to reveal my pride so that I could repent and live more for His glory in all that I do," he says. "For that, I am grateful."
