Lesson(s) Learned

Have you ever noticed at the end of one chapter of a book, the author (or perhaps it’s the publisher) intentionally leaves some space before moving onto the next chapter? Sure, one could argue that it’s solely done as a means to properly format a book; but after looking around my bedroom at the all the cardboard boxes and all the empty spaces in between, I tend to think the empty spaces in books (and the empty spaces in life) need more attention and more credit than we oftentimes give them. The spaces in between chapters of a book are there to help you pause. They’re there to help you reflect on what you’ve learned and remember the people you’ve grown to know and love along the journey. They’re there to help you make sense of things past and prepare you for things to come. As I sit here in my bedroom surrounded by the smell of cardboard boxes and the sounds of the people I love moving about the house, I realize that the empty spaces in my room are much lik...

Hit and Run I don’t know how your Saturday morning started. Perhaps, it was a “normal“ day for you and your family. I surely hope so. My family, however, was not quite-so-lucky this morning. It all started when I, unusually, awoke from my sleep at a bright-and-early-time-before-7:30-a.m. this morning. This may not sound so off-base for many of you early risers, but let me remind you: I’m a teacher. And it’s a Saturday. In the summertime. Needless to say, 7:30 a.m. isn’t my go-to wake-up call for a summertime Saturday. In fact, if I had anything to do with it, 7:30 a.m. wouldn’t even be on my radar. Shortly after waking up, the doorbell rang and was followed by a knock at the front door. Dad answered the door to greet two of our neighbors, who apparently had a third-party, not-so-great story to share with us. From there, it all unraveled. An unknown driver hit three of the cars parked in front of our house. And didn’t stick around to leave any explanation or any evid...

If you want to know how to “Get It Right” on Mother’s Day. I have some very simple pieces of advice for you. 1.      Know who your mom isn’t. 2.      Know who your mom is. 3.      Make it more about her than you. 4.      Plan accordingly. With all said, let’s start with a story, shall we? Quite a few weeks ago, I went to Target in hopes of securing a Mother’s Day card before “all the good ones” were taken. (I assumed I had already purchased every Mother’s Day card Hallmark had to offer. #HallmarkPlatinumMember) I wanted to get a really good card for her. Because she’s a really good mom. Every really good mom deserves a really good card. Right? Well, yes. That, and I didn’t want to be interviewed on the evening news for why I was waiting until the last minute to thank the woman who gave birth to me. In fact, I remember watching the Jacksonville news one time a few years a...

Some say there's a calm before the storm. For some, the calm is in the dead-middle of the storm (i.e. hurricanes #FloridaGirl). For others still, the calm comes after the storm. As of yesterday and early this morning, I'd categorize myself in the last of those three options. When you experience a calm after a storm, you can't really do anything else except to be thankful you're okay, praise God for His protection, and learn to trust in His promises a little more the next time. I seem to be getting ahead of myself here, so let me back up and start here: I know the promises of God. I've read all of them. Heard stories on them as a child. No, I couldn't quite give you an exact number of promises recorded in the Bible. (Perhaps, that's something I should work on tallying up.) But I've heard them. And I know them (exact numbers and tally marks aside). Since I grew up in church, hearing the promises of God is just something I got used to. A...

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). ...

Lately, I've been going through a personal Bible study by Kelly Minter entitled "Nehemiah: A Heart That Can Break," and I have recently (within the last couple of days or so) asked that God would specifically break my heart for something that breaks His. Naturally, we all have those areas that touch a soft spot in our hearts, but this prayer I've been praying asked God to specifically break my heart for something or some area that I had not yet considered. In other words, I've been asking God to extend the borders of my scope of compassion. At the end of the day, I truly want my life and my compassion for others to mirror that of the heart of God for the world in its entirety. I'm not there yet. Not. even. close. Today, God very vividly answered my prayer for a broken heart for something that breaks His heart. But, as you can probably imagine, it came in a much different packaging than I originally anticipated (which, in itself, is a testament to...

Scars, Marks, and Understanding the Difference between the Two Every morning, I get an email-devotion sent straight to Gmail. Some mornings I get up, read it, and kind of forget about it. Some days, I don’t get to read it until the afternoon or nighttime. But this morning, however, I woke up to the sound of my devotion-email being delivered to my phone, which happened to arrive to my inbox before 7a.m. Bless them. All jokes aside, I’m sort of glad that I woke up to this devotion-email this morning because I’m pretty sure it’s exactly what I needed to read. (and maybe what some of you need to read also, so I’m going to do what I’ve been teaching my precious twin-toddler-nephews to do: I’m going to “share, share, share, share, share!”) And here goes… My devotion-in-an-email this morning centered around Job13:23b, 27, “Show me my offense and my sin… You keep a close watch on all my paths by putting marks on the soles of my feet .” Ok. There it is. So, I’m unsure ...