When Life is Rough, Buy Flowers

Life can be incredibly rough. And there are seasons to life. Life can get messy, especially when both hard and wonderful are thrown into the mix. I don't believe that hard and wonderful are mutually exclusive, but I do believe that some things are down right awful while others make us giddy with joy and delight.

There have been quite a few things that although my world is not "rocked" but them, my life does seem spiked with the bitterness of hard. I'm not even sure if that sentence make sense, but I think it's as accurate as I am going to get to what it feels like. It's the needle that stings and then you stop feeling it, but you know that it happened.

Last week after another sting, I was shopping at Costco. I needed a few things for a Wednesday night dinner party. The combination of tiredness from work and emotional tiredness from both the weekend and emotions at work led me to buy way more fruit than I can eat before it goes bad. I knew this, but let it happen because I honestly couldn't fight one more self-inflicted decision. And then I passed the flowers.

I stopped to look at them, decided it was frivolous, especially with all that was in my cart and walked on. Then I turned around and looked at them once more. I could do the $10, but not the $15 or the roses or... I walked past again. In my head once more, No I really want flowers. So I went back and chose the most colorful, the most wildflower like, and the least fake. Great qualifiers, right?

But I think that my soul needed them. It needed to be able to arrange them in a vase, or two. It needed to know that God created the simplest thing for a short amount of time for enjoyment. And my soul needed to be reminded that death and loss are natural, but so is blooming.

It's natural, special and to be enjoyed.

Friends, may you rise to meet the hard and truly enjoy the delights of life. I'm working on it too.