Humble Mind

I'm sitting on our porch. The weather is nice. There's a slight breeze. My tummy is full. We went to Sonic and got some boneless wings. We probably shouldn't have considering our financial situation, but we did and it was worth it.

I'm trying to think of something to write and coming up short. Maybe my week that passed. Maybe my week that's upcoming. Maybe the ideas I heard in church.

Let's start with the week that passed.
I'm struggling to avoid wishing for things I've had. Things like jobs. My last teaching job at Kennedy to be exact. I was talking to Lindsey about this earlier today. I see a trend, too. When I'm in a job, I look at other situations and I wish I was somewhere else. Example: when I was at Verizon, I hated being there and I wished I could be in a higher paying position within the company or in a different job outside the company--a job that didn't involve me spending eight hours a day talking on the phone. Then, I got a job teaching social studies to seventh and eighth graders. I was excited! ... Until about October when I became overwhelmed with grading papers, learning classroom management and received two or three paychecks. I remembered that I didn't have to work at home, and I had paychecks that had larger numbers printed on them. The grass was greener. So, I applied to another tech support call center. They liked my experience and hired me. My first day was February 1. It took until February 15 for me to realize I made a bad mistake. I missed teaching. Or maybe the grass was greener. So, I applied at another school, got hired. Guess what? The grass is greener.

Crap! Well, to my credit, I'm realizing my flaw. I'm working hard at this school despite it's unusually long hours, weird classroom setup, tension between teachers, no library... See? I'm complaining. The grass is greener. I'm still soaking in my experience. I'm learning a lot here. Which brings us to this week's thoughts. I took some notes at church...

We're in Philippians 2. I need to read the chapter in detail. Maybe later today. I read a little today. Here's what I got from Nate's lesson and the chapter I read. You can have a mind of humility or one of pride. A prideful mind is self seeking, self gratifying, self justifying. Self. Self. Self. And that's natural. Everyone is trying to preserve and pleasure their self. It's primitive. Evolutionary even. What's not natural is to consider others more important. That's difficult to do...

So, what do I do? I can write and write about considering others. But what am I doing? Christ showed us the ultimate. He demonstrated exactly how to consider others more important. He was humiliated.

I'm still sorting all this out. It's hard to write coherently. I'll think more.