Taking a Compliment

I'm not sure if I'm unique in this area or not. You see, whenever someone praises me for something I've done (genuine praise mind you, not flattery), I redden ever so slightly and mumble something like "erm...thanks" or "praiseGod" or even "no, no it was nothing". After which I shuffle off and try to hide from the next person who looks like they're going to say something nice to me.

Now it's laughable I admit, but I genuinely have trouble taking a compliment. The problem is intensified when someone I respect and hold in high regard praises me. Boy! It get's so bad, "oh, you're just saying that to be nice" etc. In fact, I've been told that I often come across as being falsely humble, which is just a small minded form of pride.

So, as always, Dante and Lewis have something amazing to say about this:

"And when the voice had ceased, and all was still,
I saw four mighty shades approaching us
with neither joy nor sadness in their eyes.

'Behold that shade whose right hand wields the sword,'
my worthy Teacher thus began to say,
'who comes before the others as their lord.

Homer the sovereign poet is that soul.
Horace the satirist comes after him,
Ovid comes third, and Lucan is the last.

...

So did I see united that sweet school
of the lord of the most exalted song
that like an eagle soars above the rest.

When they had talked together for a while
they turned to me, and beckoned me to come,
bringing a smile unto my Teacher's lips,

And greeted me, and honored me so well
that they included me among their band,
and made me sixth in that academy."

-Dante, Inferno, Canto Four

Keep in mind that when he writes this, he doesn't know for sure that 700 years from when he's writing he'll still be considered one of the greatest if not the greatest poet of all time. For anyone but Dante, this blatant self praise would be at best ridiculous and at worst falsely prideful. This is but the first of many instances throughout the Comedy where he basically praises himself. But he deserves it! But he's only in Canto Four! How does he have the guts (Even if he is DANTE) to compare himself with Virgil and Homer!

Dante is certainly worthy of the praise he gives himself, but how was he able to praise himself without sinning?

Contrast that passage with this one from Clement I:

"The humble person should not testify to his own humility, but leave it to someone else to testify about him. " -38:2

"Let a man be faithful, let him be able to expound knowledge, let him be wise in the interpretation of discourses, let him be energetic in deeds, let him be pure; for the greater he seems to be, the more he ought to be humble, and the more he ought to seek the common advantage of all, and not his own." -48:5-6

Dante fulfills all of these, but I'm not sure if he makes a mistake in praising himself, if he is praising himself.

In Purgatory, on the ring of the prideful where the penitent are stooped under huge boulders, Dante also stoops down in order to talk to them. In effect, he participates in the penitence. I think he does this two other times, but I shall have to re-read to be sure. The fact is though, that he knew he had leanings toward being pride ful and yet he included himself in the "Academy". Can a virtuous man praise himself?

Now that I think of it, Paul does the same thing:

http://www.biblegateway.com/keyword/?search=follow%20my%20example%20&version1=49&searchtype=all&spanbegin=52&spanend=73

But I'm not Paul or Dante, how should I take a compliment?

Here's one from Lewis:

"I suddenly remembered that no one can enter heaven except as a child; and nothing is so obvious in a child - not in a conceited child, but in a good child - as its great and undisguised pleasure in being praised...Apparently what I had mistaken for humility had, all these years, prevented me from understanding what is in fact the humblest, the most childlike, the most creaturely of pleasures - nay, the specific pleasure of the inferior: the pleasure of a beast before men, a child before its fathe, a pupil before his teacher, a creature before its Creator. I am not forgetting how horribly this most innocent desire is parodied in our human ambitions, or how very quickly, in my own experience, the lawful pleasure of praise from those whom it was my duty to please turns into the deadly poison of self-admiration. But I thought I could detect a moment - a very, very short moment - before this happened, during which the satisfaction of having pleased those whom I rightly loved and rightly feared was pure."

-C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

I do feel much much pleasure when I am complimented (or as MKR would say, "my ego is stroked" ) But try as I might, I rarely am able to hold on to that first moment of pure satisfaction of having pleased another soul. Which sends me careening to the other extreme of trying to reject praise, which is a problem.

So the question is, how does one take a compliment in a way that glorifies God and allows one to rightly take joy in having pleased someone by good action?

Perhaps I am being too anxious...