Stop and smell the flowers in your life.

Stop and smell the flowers in your life. Today I know that I am brilliant, magnificent and unique. Today I surround myself with people that love, honor and value me for who I am. I honor them for who they are and recognize that there is no need to complete. We are all part of the magnificent bouquet of life. Regardless of who we are we fill in the spaces as needed to make the whole a more joyous expression of love. We understand that we as individuals are whole, and complete, and yet we are willing to join in the community to create a greater whole. We choose to work together, rather than competing with each other. 

Day 28: flowers. Today is our opportunity to be the most unusual flower in the beautiful bouquet of life. Today is the day we can recognize the beauty that is uniquely ours and the gifts we bring to the world. When we spend our life thriving instead of competing we create the most beautiful bouquet and the we allow those around us to shine as they are.

One of my favorite flowers has to the be the anthurium. I love its heart shaped flower which reminds me that being open is the only way to live life. Yet I know today that if the world were filled with only anthuriums it would soon lose its uniqueness and I would lose interest. When my beloved brings me flowers I love the wide array of color, shape, smell, and beauty of each part of the bouquet. In life, we spend most of our lives trying to conform to what the world is asking from us, rather than asking the world for what we want. As my mother would say we have the cart before the horse.

Today I when I look at a bouquet I look at the sum of it. How well does it flow, what foliage complements the flowers that it surrounds. What has been used as filler, and in a month will I remember the individual flowers, or the fact that my beloved loved me enough to get me flowers? Before my beloved and I discovered each other and I was dating myself purchasing myself flowers was one of the favorite things to do for myself. I would go to the market and find the bouquet that called to my heart and that was the one that I would purchase for myself. I would take them home and present them to myself and know that my beloved (myself) had given me flowers.

For the longest time in my life, I focused on the lack, and what was missing. I didn't have anyone to love. I was all alone. What I didn't understand at the time was that I was creating more of the same. When I became aware that I am never alone and that I have the most loving relationship in the world with myself. It was that moment that allowed me to find the many ways to love, value, and appreciate who I am. It seemed at once when I understood this core value that the entire world became aware I was alive and that I was magnificent.

If the world were filled with only one flower it would be a pretty boring place. This year my beloved, and two very dear friends took at trip to see the tulips fields of Washington. I love the array of color and the row after row of tulip beauty. What I love the most was getting down into the tulips and recognizing that each one of them was very different, unique. At once I was filled with the understanding that as beautiful as all of that was I was deeply grateful for all of the other species of flowers that fill the world today. It was at that moment that I understood that my uniqueness. My beauty is what is needed in the world.

Spend some time with those you love today and recognize that you are a bouquet of flowers each of you shinning as who you are. Enjoy the bouquet.

I love you,

Rev Allen