It’s not all about me…

I grew up in a Christian home and accepted Jesus as my Savior when I was almost 6 years old.  I always thought that I wanted to be a doctor, maybe even a missionary doctor.  I went to a Christian college and majored in Biology.  I was premed until my junior year.  Then I changed my mind since I noticed that my premed friends had 4.0 averages.  I was just a B student.  What do you do with a Biology degree?  I worked as a Quality Control Specialist for a food store for 1 day.  I quit when my boss told me that I would be checking the shelf life of different foods by doing taste tests.  I thought that I would be conducting chemical experiments on the safety of the food.

Then I decided to be a Medical Technologist.  I had a lot of trouble finding the veins when I needed a test tube of blood from the patient.  I dropped out before I was kicked out.  I was feeling like a total failure.  I went back home and substituted for a year.  I decided that I never wanted to be a teacher.  Substituting is HARD work.  Very few students want to work.  A lot of them love giving the sub a really hard time. 

I finally got a job working as a park ranger.  It was a lot of fun working outdoors.  I made compliance inspections at marinas, took water samples to determine coliform (bacteria) count, checked boundary lines, checked water buoys in the lake, wrote tickets for violations on the lake and on land.  It was a fun job, but the night hours and TDY’s were terrible for family life.

When our first child came along I decided to get a day job with the summers off.  I wanted to spend as much time at home as possible.  It’s amazing, but God provided just the right job at just the right time.  A rural school in the same town where we lived needed someone to teach Algebra I & II, Geometry, Chemistry I, Biology, Spanish I, Senior English, and Journalism.  WHEW!  I taught Algebra II and Geometry alternate years, as well as Biology and Chemistry I alternate years.  In my Chemistry class I was afraid that my students would blow up the school when they started mixing chemicals together before receiving instruction from me.  Then when it came to dissecting frogs in Biology class they started waking up while we were doing the dissection.  Karen, the superintendent’s daughter, ran out of the room feeling nauseated.  We poured on the animal ether.  I never dissected live frogs again.  Actually, I never taught Biology again.  I’ve been teaching math ever since.

I titled this brief autobiography, “It’s not all about me…”  I try to do everything to bring God honor and glory.  There’s a book that was written years ago called What Would Jesus Do?  I frequently ask myself that question because it’s really not about me;  it’s about Jesus.  He died on a cross to save me from my sins and rose again on the third day.  Now I live for Him.  My favorite Bible verse is found in Philippians 4:13,  “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”