“Stop and smell the roses.”
This is a piece of advice that was given to me by a man whom I had for community my sophomore year of high school (community is that period where you would be placed with some classmates and there’d be an adult faculty member there, and then you would hear school announcements for the day-usually in the middle of the school day. I’ve also heard it called “homeroom” or “BEST”).
I would often come to community looking tired and probably flustered and stressed or like I had too much to do. He and I didn’t talk that much, but we’d make casual friendly conversation, for the remainder of the 20 minute period when announcements were not being read.
He didn’t just say this to me once, but multiple times. “Kathleen,” he’d say, “Sometimes you have to stop and smell the roses.” He would say this in a calm, encouraging kind of way. And I appreciated his reminder to stop and enjoy things for a bit, take a break from what I was doing to realize where I am, see the beauty in life, and then return to what I was doing.
One more thing before I end. I remember sitting in a courtyard at my college last year. I was waiting for someone to meet me outside of her dorm, when I see one of my friends walk up to the entrance of the same dorm, then walk over to the flowers on one side of the door, gently lift a bloom from the bush to her nose, and smell it. She actually stopped, to smell the roses! I said hi to her and pointed out what she had just done (using the common phase at the top of this post). She just grinned slightly and said “Yeah.” Then she walked inside.
So my advice to you is to “stop and smell the roses”- take a moment to pause and notice your surroundings. Slow down a bit. Appreciate the beauty around you. Take everything in. And just don’t move too quickly through life.
Prayer changes things,” people say. It also changes us. The latter goal is the more imperative. The primary purpose of prayer is to bring us into such a life of communion with the Father that, by the power of the Spirit, we are increasingly conformed to the image of the Son.
The gift of grace is freedom; it is more than freedom from sins, but freedom from self. If God has given me grace, then I am no longer obligated to define myself by my achievements and failures. And I now have the freedom to give others grace, without feeling like I’m losing a part of who I am. Because I am no longer that person.
