Growing from Small to Great

So, this weekend I was able to escape grad school for a bit and see my family for a mini-vacation. I don't think I've mentioned them much so far in this blog, but just for the record, I absolutely LOVE my family. I have truly been blessed and I am so grateful for each and every one of them :)

Anyways, so I was talking to my dad about the previous day, when I had gone to my job and my boss had me do some fairly menial tasks. For some reason, my boss had been having an off day and he was a bit grumpier than usual. And for some reason, I felt the need to detail all of this to my dad.

Shortly after this, my sister mentioned a quote that she had seen and it really stuck with me. So much so that I felt I needed to blog about it and find a picture with the quote ;)

Right after I had just got done complaining about my boss. Ouch.

This is an area that I definitely need to improve. Somewhere over the years, I have become a small person. I don't think I used to talk about others nearly as much as I feel I do now.

So I talked to God about it and came up with another goal: don't talk about other people unless it is in truth and love. The truth part isn't really the hard part for me (but it helps to also prevent gossip). For me the hard part will be the love part. I'm going to need to ask myself lots of questions when I speak: Does this lift the person I'm talking about up? Is it encouraging? Is it helpful for the person I'm talking to to hear this? Would I say this in front of the person I'm talking about? Would I be embarrassed if they knew I was saying this about them?

This also ties in to a previous lesson I've been learning about considering others better than myself (see my previous post, Eye-Candy).

It's interesting because the career path that I'm on, I chose because I want to help people. How can I help them if I don't respect and love them first? Why would they even want my help if I don't show that I care for them?