This is the dilemma I face tomorrow. Adrian Peterson or Chris Johnson?

Our Fantasy Football Draft will take place during our lunch hour. Twelve teams. Two minutes per pick. It’ll take about two hours. Pizza is provided.

So what’s the problem you ask? I’m drew the number one draft slot, and I’m still not sure which premier running back to choose.

On one hand there is a clean cut, hard working guy that keeps his head down and his mouth shut. His teammates love him, and the fans worship him. (He also happens to hail from my wife’s home state.) On the other hand, there is a prima donna who stirs up controversy and drama, who talks a big game, only sometimes delivers and holds a team hostage thinking he’s worth tens of millions of dollars more than he deserves.

Let’s recap: Blue collar with class or entitled entertainer.

Guess that wasn’t so hard after all.

Thumbs up or thumbs down?

Tuppephobia. Not to be confused with taphephobia: the fear of being burried alive. Tuppephobia is the fear of Tupperware. This may not accurately describe my exact disease, since I’m not afraid of the Tupperware itself. My fear stems from situations like this. No offense Mom, I’m sure every single kid that grew up in the 80’s and 90’s had a corner of the kitchen that looked like this, but I still have flash backs of putting away dishes at an early age and being completely overwhelmed by the landslide of plastic containers and lids. My entire being would cringe at the thought of digging through that cabinet of immeasurable chaos for just one matching set of Tupperware for the leftover mashed potatoes. Need two matching sets? Go fish.*

Fast forward to present day, and we have some minor marital strain on our hands. The cabinet in our apartment is slightly more organized, but when putting clean dishes away, I will gladly place every single item in its rightful position, but when it comes to the Tupperware, the Gladware and the Rubbermaid dishes. They end up in a nice neat pile on the counter, directly above their designated cabinet. My wife is less than appreciative of my lack of follow through in this area of domestic partnership. But its not my fault. All of those mismatched and unpaired containers years ago were damaged goods, and now so am I. I can’t be held responsible.

Do you suffer from Tuppephobia?

*Come to think of it, this might also explain my rediculously deep-seated distaste for left-overs. Huh.

Last night when I finished my post, Posterous was down for maintenance, and since I will be driving a two hundred mile round trip tonight after work, I decided to just roll yesterday’s thoughts into Theological Thursday. Your patience and understanding is appreciated.

This picture that I found online closely resembles the condition of my car about five years ago.

There is a fine line between humility and pride. You may actually flirt with it more than you think.

I often joked in high school and college, that I was probably the most humble person I knew. Obviously the very utterance of such a statement negates the claim itself, but I thought it was funny, and it was always good for a laugh or two. Since then I’ve honestly desired to be a person of greater humility. It’s a difficult desire to talk about with other people though. You can talk all day long about how prideful you are, but the moment you express a hunger to be humble, you elevate yourself to Mr. or Ms. Self-Righteous.

“Oh, look at Mr. .Humble Bumble. He wants us to pray that he would have even more humility than he already does.”

Ok, so people may not actually say that, but I know their thinking it, or at least I’m thinking that their thinking it, which makes it true, at least for me. (That got a little confusing, but I’m pretty sure it makes sense if you read it with the proper pauses.)

So how can pride sneak up on you? What can happen that pushes your heart from humility to pride? Oh, you don’t ever struggle with pride? I understand. I rarely do either. You can probably stop reading right now, but for those that do falter, it’s our selfish, sinful human hearts and Satan, the master or manipulation.

Compared to what surrounds us here in the Dallas area, my wife and I live in what most people would consider a very modest apartment. It’s clean and safe, but there’s nothing flashy. After paying our rent today at the front office, I was walking out to my car and made an observation. My trusty 1993 Mazda 626 with 190,000 miles was an eye-sore sitting next to a fairly new Lexus, a three or four year-old Tahoe and bright, shiny BMW.

Our pastor speaks often of his 2000 Chevy Impala. He calls it the Gimp-ala, ‘cause it’s so ghetto, but he has got nothing on my busted up Mazda that I’ve driven since I was fifteen. My car is by far the ugliest ride in my office parking lot, but it runs. It gets me from point A to point B, and the air conditioning works great even in 100 degree heat. But it is pitiful looking. The paint is all faded or chipping off. The hubcaps are cracked, and one is missing. The rearview mirror has fallen off repeatedly and now sits permanently on the passenger side floor board. The cloth seats are tearing. The radio/cassette display can’t be read. Yes, I said cassette. The hood is bent. The plastic grill is broken in three places and held together with electrical wire from the broken fog lights. The headliner fabric is falling down. The entire car suffered hail damage several months ago, and the key won’t unlock the passenger side door.

All of these things collude to help keep me humble, but today, as I was walking out of that front office after dropping off our rent check, thinking how nice it would be to live in a better apartment or feel like we have enough money to buy our own house, all I could think about was all of these people driving much nicer cars than mine, but are evidently in a similar financial situation due to us living in the same location. First I got frustrated, because I deserve a nicer, more reliable car. But then I got prideful, because look how smart I am with my money. Look how I’m not throwing my hard earned income away on frivolous, depreciating assets that achieve nothing more than the vehicle I drive.

In an instant I catapulted from humble and thankful to prideful and cynical.

What things keep you humble? Does it ever have the opposite effect?