When You Take Advantage Of Grace (Part 1).......

Hopefully many of you are Disney fans, or know of who can fill you in on the whole premise of The Princess and the Frog, but in the meantime, I recently found myself relating to a scene........animated movie of all things. In the movie, Tiana and Prince Naveen go to voodoo queen Mama Odie to help them to turn back into humans from frogs. To their surprise, Mama Odie has no trick, potion, or spell to bring them back to normal. In true Disney form, Mama Odie breaks into an elaborate song with animal backup singers and dancers and all of nature creating the perfect platform to proclaim.......that it all depended on them. 

 “Dig a little deeper.” “Don’t matter where you come from.” “Don’t even matter what you are.”

Tiana, who was depicted as a hard worker.....who often overworked herself concluded she needed to physically work harder to get the things she wanted. What she didn’t realize is that her view was misguided. That her sole purpose wasn’t in all the work she was doing. Her happiness didn’t rely on the opening of her own business, which was the biggest goal she was striving for. Mama Odie was trying to open her eyes to a whole new point of view. 

I see myself all in this scene. A couple years ago I had an opportunity to go back to school for a doctoral program. Working three jobs at the time, I just knew God was telling me my time was finally arriving. I had been working hard for a lot of years, and was excited to quit all this working, focus on going back to school, studying to become a great professional with my own office working for a large company. 

Long story short, I didn’t get accepted and I was completely devastated. Didn’t want to talk to anybody about anything. It was my rock bottom. But it was there where I decided to really focus on what God really wants me to do......and things slowly started looking up for me. Mind you my circumstances didn’t immediately change, but my perspective on things were coming around.

I repented for trying to do things my way and decided to accept the grace God has given me to start again. I decided I was being protected from something and decided to be grateful for it. That’s when I started suddenly getting ideas for A Peculiar Kind Of Classic. I didn’t write anything at the time, in fact I was notorious for starting journals but never finishing them. English/Reading/Language Arts/ etc. was never my favorite subject. So I didn’t bother to write things down or actually take advantage of the new opportunity......the new grace that I was being given. 


In hindsight, I did something that ended up taking back to my old ways, fears, and struggles.......

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