Smell The Roses

Since no one knows the future, who can tell someone else what is to come? -- Ecclesiastes 8:7 NIV

As Anna stood atop a rock cliff overlooking the ocean at sunset, her true love on one knee before her asking her to be his wife, she couldn't help but think about how she got to this spot and laugh a little...on the inside, of course! It hadn't been all that long ago that she was hiring this very man to drive her across Ireland to Dublin where her soon to be fiance was waiting. It was one of those trips. Anything that could possibly go wrong did, from his car rolling back down a hill into a pond with her luggage inside to stepping in cow manure to rolling down an Irish hill in a rainstorm and ending up in a mud puddle (and she had missed her train on that one), even the time the two of them crashed a wedding. By the end of the night, she had spilled wine on the bride and puked all over her driver.

Looking back now, it seemed obvious that it wouldn't take very long for her regular life to seem...dull.

You see, the journey IS the point! Anna couldn't have dreamed up an adventure like that even if she had tried. We spend a lot of our lives, I think, waiting. We're waiting for things to get better. We're waiting for the next phase of our lives. We're waiting...for something good to happen. But great things are happening all over the place, and many times they come disguised as more trouble.

Embrace every day, every minute even, of your life! Appreciate all of it for exactly what it is (God's gift). Have peace during the middle of the harshest of times knowing that you will look back on them later and see all that you learned because of it. The roses are there to be smelled, not just to be seen and admired.