I love their gorgeous colors (including the white ones); I love their fragrance. I love that they change from a tightly wrapped bud into open flowers even in my living room.
I love going to the April Rose Show at Leu Gardens here in Orlando, and if there's a rose garden anywhere in the world where I happen to be traveling, I try to visit it. I love the rose bushes my husband so kindly planted for me in our front yard.
Often when I work with these flowers -- either with the bushes in my yard or when someone gives me long-stemmed ones to put in my favorite vase -- I invariably prick my finger on the thorns. Sometimes more than once. It's pretty painful and usually produces bright red blood on my finger. One day, I seemed to do this an inordinate number of times and I thought, "Why do I put myself through this? There are other flowers to like that don't have any thorns at all!" and my mind immediately responded: "For the beauty." I thought about that for a moment -- it was true. I endure the roses' pricks and pain (and the special tending the bushes require), because I see such beauty in them, and having that beauty in my life overshadows any sacrifice I need to make to keep it there.
The experience made me think about people, and how each of us is like the rose: a combination of the beauty and the thorns -- both wonderfulness and the capacity to hurt others. We are constantly answering the question in our relationships of whether having a person's beauty in our life is worth resolving the pain they may have caused us. We may even wonder if we have it in us to deal with the pricks, the hurts. It is then that we need to be propelled by the beauty within them again. We need to see their faithfulness, their friendship, and their love.
I know that I love the rose's beauty so much I will pay the price to keep it within my gaze, and I definitely have people in my life I very easily feel that way about already. But I want to try and remember this when it's not so clear to me -- when I'm tempted to throw in the towel, when I'm finding it hard to push through pain and restore a relationship with someone. In those times, I want to remember to see their beauty, and allow it to overshadow the sacrifice that might be required do this. I want to believe it is worth the struggle to keep that beauty in my life, worth enduring the thorns.
After all, isn't that what I am hoping others will see and believe about me?
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