Stopping To Smell The Roses

smell the roses

FLOYD OR FRED? YABBA DABBA DO!

A cup of coffee, my favorite pen and a fresh tablet… I guess it doesn’t get much better than this.

Understanding it is truly the little things in life that bring joy, is a gift from God. It’s easy to get sidetracked by the bigger things in life. We get consumed with the tasks of life and let them choke out the more important things in life. That’s what happened to me today.

I’ve often heard it referred to as “stopping to smell the roses.”

I’ve also bought my share of roses but rarely take a whiff in the process. I’m reminded of my bad habit of missing the important things… Again.

Today was my youngest daughters first cross country meet. Not of the year, but of her life. It’s not completely my fault due to an error by the hosting school to not send a follow-up schedule change yesterday.

I dropped the little one off at school two hours before the meet was to start. She was a bit nervous so I said, “I don’t care how you finish, I’m just proud of you for doing something in spite of being nervous.” She quickly answered with a grin, “You mean like driving the go-carts”? I smiled and answered, “Yeah, like driving the go-carts.” That was last weekends, “Face Your Fears” lesson. Her smile indicated her appreciation for my persistence.

Instead of driving leisurely to the meet, my calculations gave me about an hour and a half to multi-task and knock down a lot of birds with a few stones.

When I got the word the meet was to start an hour earlier, it was too late. I drove like an idiot trying desperately to make up time, but to no avail. I missed my daughters first cross country race. Some of her teammates got the information late and missed the race as well.

That doesn’t change the way I feel right now. I know those “important items” needing to be crossed off my list could have waited. I could have done those later and if pushed, I could have postponed them until Monday.

The only thing I couldn’t change is my little girls first race, whenever it was going to be.

As I was speeding down the freeway, glancing between the speedometer and the clock, regret settled in my stomach. Another rose I let slip away without a sniff.

My daughter has a great heart and is always forgiving. She knows I’m proud of her, not just for placing with a good time, but mostly for facing her fears and giving absolutely all she had. When I finally got there, I could see her sense of accomplishment, in her smile and demeanor. She wore her sweat like a medal of honor.

I can’t get that time back. I’ll never have the image in my mind of my little girl finishing her first race. All the years our youngest daughter watched her big sister play sports, now it’s her big sisters turn to watch and cheer, and that’s exactly what she did. My wife took time off from work to make sure she was there as well. If #2 wasn’t at college she wouldn’t have missed it either.

I really enjoyed the cartoon “The Flinstones” when I was a kid. Well, except for the part at the beginning of the show, when the saber tooth house cat kicked Fred out of his own house and locked the door.

Often in that cartoon Fred would do something stupid or selfish, usually to his wife Wilma or his daughter Pebbles. When Fred realized how foolish he’d been, he would start to physically shrink in his chair. He would shrink to the point where he was one-eighth the size of the seat itself.

I didn’t understand what the cartoonist was trying to communicate at that time in my life. I understand now that Fred was feeling regret, he was feeling smaller as a man.

That’s how I feel today…