A Little Beauty

In life sometimes we just need a little beauty.

Something to remind us that life is sweet...

Even in times when life seems unfair.

When things happen that we just can't understand.

Like a friend who has cancer, or a life taken too soon.

As I picked the tiny viola flowers for a completely different sort of post today I was struck by how frost bitten their delicate petals were.

But how despite their blemishes they were still so very beautiful.  Reminding us that life is imperfect, and that even with the bumps and bruises we gather along the way, there is beauty deep down.

As I have been having some of the best weeks of my life career wise, some of my blog friends have been having some very hard days.  So this post is dedicated to them...especially Jenni.

To those of you who are struggling, I wish you strength, love, support, and comfort.  And I hope that even in the darkness you will find the beauty.

My Cup Runneth Over

Sometimes when I think I should just quit blogging and move on to other things, I do a post and you all remind me of all the reasons why I'm still here.

You leave comments or email me about something I have written, and I know that on some level we have connected...if only for a moment.

It's those connections that make us human, which help us to grow, and what makes each of us special and able to bring something unique to this world, thereby making it a better place.

There is so much beauty in the world, found in people, places, and even things.

Yet sometimes that beauty is diminished, lost behind the pain and ugliness that exists in our world.

The good in the world is never buried very deep though, and sometimes all we have to do is to open our eyes, and our hearts, in order to bring it back to the surface.

Prejudice is the veil that some of us wear in order to color our own perceptions of what is beautiful.  And I've always thought that it's much easier to judge others than to look deep inside ourselves to find out what is truly making us dislike what we see around us and in others.

My hope is, and always has been, that my children, and their children, will one day live in a world where people learn to judge someone for who they truly are.  And the only way we can do that is to get to know the other person.   To reach out a hand to your fellow man, even if they aren't the same size as you, practice the same religion you do, love the same gender you do, or live in the same type of house you do.

I also hope that if I have ever just lost everything I own, including those I love, to a tornado, an earthquake, a flood, a hurricane, or any other natural disaster, that no one will judge me based on how I look.  I hope that my first thought when I see people suffering is not what they look like, but what I can do to help them in their time of need.  Because if someone can focus on a person's appearance above all else, and not on how they can help them, then I think that says way more about the person doing the judging then it ever could about those being judged.  

In the blog world we like to share what is pretty and perfect, but like some of you who have been so sweet to email me have said...sometimes it's nice to go a little deeper, and that's what I tried to do in my last 2 posts.

Now it's time to move on, but before this topic is laid to rest, I have to thank each of you for sharing a little bit of yourselves with me each and every day.  Through you I learn so much, and in the end that makes me a better person...someone whose cup runneth over, and someone who sees the world as a place where the glass is half full and not half empty.