More Highly than You Ought

At times it's easy for me to think of myself more highly than I ought (Romans 12:3) and yet to not even realize that I'm doing it. Recently, my job has revealed this subtle problem to me again.

At my job, we make new drawings and changes to drawings to match customer orders. When I first begin this job almost three months ago, I didn't yet have a computer and had no product knowledge. So for the first few weeks, I spent almost the entire time checking other people's work.

Checking is not fun, but it is necessary since it's so easy to make a mistake or think you changed something that you didn't. But there is a fun side to checking that can encourage pride in your thinking. Finding a mistake is actually somewhat fun. When this happens, my sinful nature thoughts come to my mind like: "You're so smart, smarter than the guy who drew this, I bet no one else would have caught that, how could someone be so dumb as to do that wrong, you're new and you caught that one."

After several weeks of these thoughts, I began to finally get jobs of my own to do. Soon, I was the one making the stupid mistakes that anyone should have caught. Some of them I could excuse, but others were obvious (once pointed out to me). By now I should have learned, but it's still tough. Pride still sneaks up instead of a humble spirit.

When I received a list of mistakes this morning in my email, my first thought was that the guy sending the email was wrong, that the guy who checked my work should have been more careful, that it's someone else's fault that I made a mistake.

In reality, I have to realize that God in his infinite wisdom has made me prone to error. I need the help of others to point out my mistakes and accept it with humility. I need to be careful not to think of myself as better than another. Through seeing my own mistakes in black and white at work, I am reminded that our sins though not often so obvious to others are clearly seen by God. If we confess our sins he will forgive us.

Lessons learned at work are good for life!

It's a New Year!

Happy New Years! How did 2009 come so fast? I guess time seems to speed up when a lot of exciting events happen in sequence! This has been the most momentous year of my life. Becoming engaged to John in April, moving to Ohio in August, getting married in September, and starting a new job in October, moving to a new apartment in November and traveling a lot in between has made for a great year! Who knows what this next year will bring? Thankfully we can trust in the God of the Bible who will bring us through the future!

Christmas is almost here!

In just a few days, Christmas will be here!  We only have two more days of work in 2008 - it's really hard to believe that time has gone that fast.  I am looking forward to spending time with our families and friends.  Life has been busy and when time is at minimum, blogging is usually the first thing to go.  But I do have a few minutes for a short random update right now.

We had fun going Christmas caroling last night with our church.  It has been really cold so it was nice to jump back into a warm car after each house/nursing home that we went to.  Christmas has kinda snuck up on me this year.  It's always a busy time, but this year has been exceptionally so as we've moved, spent 2 weekends in other states, had friends over 5 times and more in just the last 5 weeks!  So our plan today is to go shopping for Christmas presents!  I'm sure we're not the only ones with this plan today and I'm looking forward to hopefully finding gifts for each family member on our list.  Sunday will be busy with Church in the morning where John is playing an arrangement on his violin with 3 flutes and the piano.  Then on Sunday night we have a family Christmas service where many families will be singing songs together.  We're singing with the Lanhams as we've pretty much been 'adopted' into their family here.  John is also accompanying a couple families on the piano.

So that's a bit about our life.  Time passes by so quickly and often I think of many of you who read this blog and wonder what's going on in your lives.   I hope that in this Christmas busyness that you are able to pause and remember our Savior Jesus Christ.

Fun Snow

Having been in Ohio for a few months now, I've seen more than in my entire 14 years in Alabama - no, make that more than my 28 years in Alabama, Arkansas and Africa! That may be a slight overstatement, but not by much! I'm sure by the end of winter here, it will be genuine fact!
This afternoon as I drove home from work, we had what I'll term fun snow. It just started and has not done too much yet as you can see from the picture. The weather is not too cold (ONLY 28º) so the snow is still melting on one's windshield. The snow is beautiful as is slowly comes down. It's not coming too fast and doesn't interfere with driving. So, to me it is fun to watch as you drive.

I'm home early as we're soon leaving for Illinois. Both Lisa and Anita (John's sisters) are graduating on Saturday so we're using that as an excuse to visit. I'm looking forward to the trip! The snow seems somewhat localized. I think it will stop once we get past Cincinnati. We shall see. . .

Unexpected Guests!

The Saturday after Thanksgiving, I received a most welcome call from my friend Ivory letting me know that they were driving through this area later that day! What wonderful news! We had before us a lazy Saturday without much planned so we were very glad to hear they would come for the night!

As I did a little cooking that afternoon, John put together our new ping pong table so we could break it in with Chris and Ivory.

The table fit perfectly in our basement and we enjoyed some friendly competition!

"The ball was on his side"

Having guests is a joy!

Thanksgiving in Ohio

John and I had a great Thanksgiving meal and day with our good friends here in Ohio. The long weekend did not quite turn out as we had initially planned. John's family had planned to come stay with us, but were unable to do so because of sickness (thankfully his parents are doing well now). We definitely missed being with our families this thanksgiving, but were so thankful to share the day with our friends.

"John - another picture?"

Our friend Scott's classic grin :)

Busy cooking (not everything turned out - gravy doesn't work too well if you double the milk!).

It's almost time to eat! Rhonda did an amazing job on all the entire dinner!

We had smoked turkey. It was delicious!

After dinner, we enjoyed playing corn hole outside and then played a couple games inside and watched football. Rather, I napped and pretended to be interested in the game while the guys bemoaned the fact that their team lost :)

Homeschooled

I thought this video was well worth watching! Each homeschool stereotype was taken to it's extreme :) As a homeschooler myself, I find this to be fun - enjoy!