Stick To It


Today, when I walked into my school classroom, there it was. Again. In the same spot it was several days before, and for several days in a row now. The realization was not quite fun, but the daily reminder was starting to get just sheer frustrating. And for that reason alone, it annoyed me and nudged me to move, to correct it, to make all things right in my little 4th grade classroom. What in the world am I talking about, might you ask. (?) A poster, that's what. A smallish poster containing a chart of the United States capitals, state birds, and state flowers. And where was it? On the floor. For what seemed like the fiftieth time. As I bent down this morning to re-stick this poster back on the wall. again. again. again. again. I looked at the back, saw all sorts of mounds and clusters of different kinds of tapes. Considered stapling the poster to the wall of the classroom. Saran wrapping it. Hot gluing it. Anything. Just doing something to make for sure that thing would stick to the wall and stop frustrating me oh-so-much.
But then. A strange idea occured to me. Does the poster have to be on the wall? No, the poster doesn't HAVE to be on the wall. Just because it always has been, doesn't mean it always has to be. Expecially since school is ending in two weeks. And the kids should know their state capitals by now. And. And. And.
Bottom line to this silly little daily frustration story is this: We do the same thing in our spiritual lives. We spend all sorts of mental, emotional, physical, etc. energy on trying things our own way. Though, many times and for many different reasons, our way "falls off the wall" so-to-speak. We try different venues. Maybe logical venues, such as "more" of this or "less" of this or a "different kind" of this. And pretty soon, our ideas just look and sound pretty ridiculous to everyone around us. Yet we justify. Let me tell you, we don't need more tape or staples to hold our plans together. We don't even need to waste our time, energy, and other resources to concoct crazy alternatives, such as saran wrap and hot glue to ensure our way works. What we sometimes (and most often) need is simply this: to take our plans and our thoughts of how things "should be" off the wall altogether. Just because we've always done it our way doesn't mean it should continue. And when we have the courage to take our posters of our plans off the wall, guess what? A space is cleared and primed for the setting of a Masterpeice.
Think about it.
And stick to that.

Comments

Post a Comment

Reader's Favorite Posts

"That's Not My Name!"

Hey. Okay. Say, you just meet someone new. What’s the first thing you usually ask them? ….Usually, it goes something like, “Hi, I’m so-and-so. What’s your name?” Their name. You’re usually concerned with a person’s name because it stands for the entirety of their identity. Think of famous people you know, and as soon as you think of their name, you think of something associated with them. The same thing is true for family members, close friends, co-workers, acquaintances, etc. A name holds a lot together, so you can be especially sure that I began to have difficulty when my name and identity began to get mixed up. Before I get ahead of myself, let’s start at the beginning. Hello. For those of you that do not know me, my name is Rosemary H Hazard. But for some reason, the hospital got it all confused. To them, I was Rosemary D Hazard. Many times over, I told them, “That’s not my name!” But for some reason, the bracelets, tags, stickers, etc. all said the same old thing. “ Rosema
Read more

For inquiring minds that would like to know… here's our story.

For some of you in my life, you've been asking, praying, and waiting to see something noteworthy happening in my dating life. So have I. Because I don't exactly know where to start, I'll simply begin at the beginning. Jeff and I both went to school together at Trinity Christian Academy here in Jacksonville from kindergarten to twelfth grade. From first grade to sixth grade, we had all the same teachers. Because our last names are so similar alphabetically (Hazard and Hill), we were seemingly ALWAYS sitting next to each other. Seriously. Always. Around. Each. Other. haha… For those of you that know me well or have known me for a long time, you know that God's done quite the work in my life over the years in chipping away some (note: not all) of my childhood sassiness and giving me a sweet spirit in its place. However, for those of you that knew me then, you would readily agree that I was quite the "over-confident little girl" (to quote my daddy).
Read more

The Birth of Hope

The Birth of Hope  And then Hope was born. Hope Elizabeth. February 25, 2017. When she was born, all 95 percentile of her filled in a portion of my heart that I never knew was vacant. As most would agree, the birth of a baby tends to change everything. And for me, everything did change. And not just at the time of birth. Roughly five months after her birth, everything for me began to change again.  At the end of July in 2017, I experienced an mental “episode” that landed me in a mental ward at a hospital in Jacksonville, Florida. Later on, I would come to realize that this episode was due to two known factors: the diagnosis of hypothyroidism (my thyroid numbers were off the charts... even my doctor at Mayo Clinic said it wasn’t the highest number he’s seen, but it was pretty close) and symptoms that closely align with what is called postpartum psychosis. Postpartum psychosis occurs roughly in 1 out of 1,000 births, so I doubt anyone that I know reading this would fully underst
Read more