Many times in my life I have been given a single rose, often in celebration of an achievement or as a thank you for a job well done. And as I often do I bring it home, gentle trim the stem and toss it into a vase of water and stick it on the table. Out of the many that I have been given through the years I can only count four that have finished blooming and have become a absolutely PERFECT ROSE!. A rose is a rose and all start out perfectly beautiful, next to poinsettias they are my favorite flowers, so all find a spot in my heart. But the four I speak of have truly blossomed out as perfect roses, not a flaw to be found by the naked eye. And all four of these roses have a story behind them. Each one of these roses were given to me because of a choice that I made and because of my actions involved, the outcome has had an everlasting impact on my life, just like the memories of the perfectness of my rose. The latest rose being the one that I received at the DAR Spring Tea on Friday afternoon. After the meeting, I had to go over to work for a bit and my rose sat on my dashboard and withstood the warmth of the afternoon sun, It stood up against getting dropped in the dirt as I was getting out of my car when I returned home, It lasted through dinner by laying on my cold marble cutting board, it waited patiently as I visited and told stories of my afternoon excitement. Finally, around 9 o'clock that evening, when I was able to take the few minutes to trim the stem and stand it's poor droopy head upright in the shelter of the vase. I didn't think it would ever survive... Sunday I paused long enough to change the water, to talk to it and breath in it's wonderful aroma. Then today I left for work, only to return later in the afternoon to find the most beautifully blossomed and perfect rose I had seen in years.
I share this story because in my haste I could not help but stop and think of all the things that rose had been through since Friday, and even possibly before I had received it, and yet it how somehow turned out perfect. I paused to reflect on how similar the rose was to the Ladies at the tea or even the state of America it's self right now. How simple it could be, even through all the hardships we face daily, if we would just pause for a moment and gently trim our stems and reset ourselves in the right water, how much easier it would be for us to Bloom perfectly where we are planted!
