The Journey

I have placed this prized – cherished picture of my granddaughter in the illustration placeholder for a special reason; she didn’t let anything distract her from what she was there to do. That is one of the many beauties of my Abby. She was three years old and she was at the ballpark to run the bases with other kids. To be sure, all the focus is over at first base with some of the older kids. I just happened to catch this shot of Abby still staying true and determined to complete her task no matter what else may have been going on. She wasn’t the focal point, the center of attention, and yet she continued toward completing her task… running the bases and crossing home plate. This is probably why she is academically second in her senior class… why she has many friends… why she has accomplished so much in her 17 years… why she could wallpaper her room with all the academic awards she has received throughout the years… why she has offers from big universities all over the U.S. including LSU, NYU, The New School, Syracuse, Alabama, VMI, Vanderbilt, Tennessee, USC, UNC, NCState… and many others…

Some say that opportunity only knocks once. But temptation and distractions seem to pound on my door forever. Even opening up and letting them in doesn’t seem to make them go away. More temptations and distractions come along and the beating goes on.

Those temptations that cause us the most problems are those that pull us away from being our best self. So I can relate to the Swiss woman who was served dinner on a domestic American flight. She opened up her dessert – a delicious looking piece of chocolate cake – and immediately sprinkled a generous layer of salt and pepper over it. A shocked flight attendant exclaimed, “Oh! It’s not necessary to do that!”

“But it is,” the woman replied, smiling. “It keeps me from eating it.”

She found a way to drive temptation away from her doorstep, at least for a while.

The most persistent temptations in my life are distractions that keep me from doing what is in my best interest.

You may want to quit that reading group, that difficult class or those music lessons. throw that book you are writing in the corner. Sometimes life is just plain hard, uncomfortable with many problems to face. It’s easy to become distracted and get discouraged.

Something baseball great Hank Aaron once said can help out here. “My motto was to keep swinging,” he said. “Whether I was in a slump or feeling badly or having trouble off the field, the only thing to do was to keep swinging.”

Sometimes we just need to keep swinging. And if we tell ourselves that all we need to do today is to take one more swing, that may be enough. We can always take one more swing. And who knows…today we might hit a home run.

Miss Abby always keeps swinging… ignoring the distractions and pushing through to complete the tasks she has set for herself. She is my inspiration in so many ways. Thank you sweetie for being so real and so loving and so you.

Grace and Peace
PaPaw

KEEP WEARING YOUR MASK
GET VACCINATED
DO YOUR PART TO KEEP US ALL SAFE

Filed under: Faith |