The rose, while it may not be everybody’s favorite flower, most people will agree it is a very beautiful flower. It’s the flower that is most sent for Valentines Day and it is symbolic in a sense that different colors of roses represent different emotions and different occasions. The rose can be very simple without many petals but the varieties that most are familiar with is the tea rose and it has many petals and layers and some have the most beautiful fragrance that can be mesmerizing.The colors of the roses have meaning too,  Red means,  I Love You; White,  Purity & Innocence; Pink, Grace, Happiness; Yellow, Friendship, Joy; etc.

 With all the upheaval in my life lately, and my work to detach from my home to move forward into a new life, I missed spring, I missed the azalea’s blooming, I missed the beauty of new growth. I missed getting the yard ready for summer, well I guess I missed everything that was familiar, that was my life. I didn’t resent it, I have no regrets, I was doing what I needed to do!

 While I packed my boxes inside, I would pause to watch my husband working on the yard for over a month now, knowing it was his therapy. Knowing in my heart that it was not my yard anymore it was easy not to think about yard work because I had so many other things on my mind. By tearing the house apart inside and having boxes everywhere, the only place possible to have order would be outside and I could really appreciate that since that is what other see, the outside. We hide so much on the inside and sometimes we hide stuff from ourselves.

Since I made a decision to stay and try to work things out, there is still no order whatsoever in the house but the yard is looking good and I told my husband that I would trim the roses, to please leave them for me since it was always my job.  I slept late yesterday, went to a meeting, grocery shopping then home. He had finished his yard work and was lounging by the pool, so very deserving of his rest time. All I wanted to do was to join him in lounging, but I had promised that I would trim the roses.

 So I went and got the clippers and started hacking them way back since I didn’t do them before the first growth of spring. He asked if I was going too far and I said no it would be fine. One thing that I know for sure is that these knock out roses would come back better than ever. So I continued to hack at them, looking at just how much old growth and new growth there was. I was enjoying the trimming, thinking about my life, relating to how at times in our lives we need to hack away at the old stuff to make something new and that there are times we have to take the new growth back just a bit to re-adjust it to make it even more beautiful. I went about methodically hacking away and before I knew it my husband was there helping me against all my protests for him to go sit. After all he had been doing yard work for months. After trimming, I was chopping the big branches smaller to make them fit the trash bags easier and he was telling me not to worry about that. But I knew what I was doing and how I wanted to do it and he kept insisting that his way was best. I started to say something a few times and realized that while I can be controlling so could he and we are both right and both wrong and so very different. So I continued to trim and he followed me around cleaning up behind me telling me not to cut the branches smaller (for the trash bag) and me wanting to cut them smaller so they fit those trash bags better. I finally figured out a way to do it my way while letting him have his way. WhiIe he was stuffing the bag I started trimming them on the plant smaller then taking out the big branches last. It was a win – win or as Charlie Sheen would say..winning. But does anyone every win? When someone wins another loses.

 The point here is not so much the roses and the trimming or who was winning, it was about team work! It felt good to be part of a team again that was working together for the greater good.  

When I look at the hacked up roses now, I know that they will come back better than ever by their very nature and be beautiful again. I know in my heart that the work that I am doing to peel away all the old growth inside of me will make me blossom and feel beautiful again just like the roses. I also realize that these beautiful plants need care in order to thrive and I will remember each day that I also need care to blossom and grow.

I am positive that everything that has ever ‘happened’ to me is Divine Right Order, no regrets, just joy and gratitude for the experiences that I have had in my life. The future isn’t written yet and we have the power to make it everything our heart desires!