The Realities of the Rose

Perspective. 

If I had a conversation with you about the rose, I wonder what you would tell me.  What do you think of or see when you see a rose?

Do you see the rose?

Or do you see the thorns?

Would you say, "I would not want roses in my flower garden, they hurt!"  Or would you say, "I love roses in my flower garden, they smell so good?"

Both are present. Both are a reality. 

Some days I see the rose and then there are those days and moments when I see the thorns. The truth is, some days we need to grieve the 'thorns' because they hurt.

But what we focus on affects our experience and the outcome.  Our behaviour will follow what we focus on.  If I dwell on the fact that there are thorns and let that consume me, I likely will not have roses in my flower garden.  

What I choose to focus on does not deny the presence of the other.  Just because I focus on the beauty and enjoy the scent of roses does not negate or deny the reality of the thorns.  

What I choose to see will make all the difference in how I view the rose.

So it is with my circumstances, my hard, my what-I-would-not-choose in my story. I have a choice on what I dwell on.  What I dwell on will affect my behaviour and the choices I make.  

Dwelling on the negative and clinging to what I want life to look like will cause me much stress, worry, and added pain.

Choosing to look for the gifts that are present, releases the endorphins that lower the stress of the pain and impact on my body.  

Releasing control, surrendering to the story I am in is accepting the thorns on the stem of the rose.  As I accept, surrender, release, call it what you want to the 'thorns'; I become more more aware and appreciate the gifts more deeply along with the hardship of the thorns.

To focus on what I am feeling due to how life's trauma and hard impact me is important and helps me to choose to focus on God and what I learn about Him and life along the way.

Choosing to stay with God, the Life-giver, will make the difference on how I process all that crosses and walks with me on this journey of life. 

To focus on one does not deny the existence of the other but it does change and alter the course of my day.  Actually, to deny one you will deny the other.  To deny the truth of the thorns in many ways affects the truth of enjoying the flower.  A greater awareness of the thorn gives way to a heightened enjoyment of the flower.

Oftentimes it's the fragile dance of living with both but putting a greater weight on one.

To acknowledge what hurts, my anger, my disappointment but then shifting my concentration to Jesus, opening up to the possibilities that just may lie within the hardship. Owning the hard and how it hurts can give space and way to healing in ways that just may surprise you.

The Enlarging of Our Soul in Grief and Pain

 

We often say, "I'll never be the same", after a life-changing and altering happening.  As much as it hurts and we'd like it to be what we always knew it as, grief, pain, broken stories, redemption leave their mark and in all honesty should not leave us the same.

We are deepened by grief's awareness.  We know more deeply the carrying of both grief and joy.  We know firsthand the ache of loss because we knew the joy of loving the one we lost or what has been lost or changed.

Grief, death, pain is because we knew love and connection and had the privilege and joy of loving someone and wholeness.  It's also once knowing health and now being very much aware of the diagnosis and sometimes the daily carrying of shards of broken health.

To learn to know who Jesus is for us in these moments, is to choose to yoke together with Him and learn of Him in deeper ways.  

To know grief is to have the opportunity to know the comfort of Jesus.  

To know loss is to have the opportunity to see things with more clarity.

To be weak is to choose to know God's strength.

To have experienced brokenness is the opportunity to know God's healing and tender touch.

To know grief is to be enlarged by it as we learn to know more of who God is in the middle of it. 

I've been enlarged by grief, health issues, and mental darkness and I don't ever want lose what I've learned and to not be deepened by the lessons I've learned within it and learning to who Jesus is.  Matthew 11:28, Come to Me - and learn of Me and you will find rest for your souls.

In learning who Jesus is we find rest.  Proverbs 18:10 tells us, "The name of the LORD is a strong tower; the righteous runs into it and is safe."  Not safe as in all blue skies and no harm, but a refuge and place to dwell and to find rest.

Being deepened by loss, grief, and pain is an awareness that leaves us changed.  It's a hard truth and a mysterious one. It's a deepening awareness that changes our thought processes, beliefs, and even friendships and connections.  We are changed because of knowing Jesus more fully within it.  In a hard and mysterious way, it is with reverence we carry and hold the change.  It's the scars that tell us what we've borne, carried, loved, and yet have no more.  It's the scars that tell us of what is while holding the awareness of what once was or what we had envisioned to be different.

I would not have chosen my hard path but I am grateful for who I've become through it all.  When we surrender what is, what was lost, and the unfulfilled desires to God, we have space to find new joys and a freedom within our story.

As the caterpillar surrenders to the process it becomes a butterfly.  As we surrender to the process of pain and joy, the both/and of life to God, we are changed and a deepened awareness of who we are and who God is takes place.  We find our wings.  We find the space and freedom to fly.

I carry my story and scars with reflective honour and give thanks for the deepening it has done in my heart.  The same can be true for you.