What about the thorns?

October 20, 2022

I saw this quote, some time ago in the Jack’s Winning Words blog – “Anyone can love a rose, but it takes a lot to love a leaf.  It’s ordinary to love the beautiful, but it’s beautiful to love the ordinary.”  (Unknown)

It is true that it is easier to love the rose than it is to think enough about the leaf to love it, too. Life has many more leaves than roses, but we tend to just look past them and focus upon the roses – the beautiful things and people that we encounter in our lives or that we strive to achieve.

But what about the things that are not only not beautiful, but perhaps even painful in life – the thorns that we encounter. If there is beauty in loving the ordinary in life, maybe there is even more beauty in leaning to love the thorns.

Both the leaves and the thorns are an integral part of the rose bush that produces the roses, just as the ordinary, day-to-day things that we experience and even the painful or hurtful things that we endure are a part of life. We must learn to love them, too.

Most of the “thorns” that we experience in life are not necessarily harmful or painful; they are just things that didn’t turn out the way we had hoped or envisioned that they would. They may be failures or disappointments or even rejections.

Just like the experience of grabbing a rose stem the wrong way teaches us about thorns and causes us to use a different approach the next time, we also learn from the life thorns that we encounter. “How we handle what’s ahead of us will be determined by what we learned from everything that’s behind us.”  (Craig Lounsbrough)

I’m not sure that we can ever learn to love the thorns that we encounter in life; however, we can decide to learn from them to make the road ahead a little less bumpy and dangerous – a little more beautiful. We can accept them and learn from them.

I find it sadly interesting that it seems to be easier to focus upon and love the ordinary and even the thorns in life once one gets older. When we are young, we are so focused and consumed with the pursuit of “getting ahead” in life (the roses that we are reaching for) that we don’t take the time to appreciate the ordinary (the leaves), much less to love the thorns.

I’m not sure that love is the right way to describe the ability to accept and learn from life’s thorns. Perhaps “appreciate” is a better description of the change that occurs as we get older or maybe just “accept” works best. One stops taking life for granted and becomes thankful for each day – for the ordinary and even for the thorns that come along with the day.

So, go ahead and stop and smell the roses, but also pause to appreciate the leaves and even to accept the thorns.  They are all part of this wonderful journey called life. What will you learn from today?

1 Comment | Inspiration | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Norm Werner

You get what you reach for…

March 10, 2021

In today’s post to his blog, Jack’s Winning Words, pastor Freed used this quote – “My life is part roses, part thorns.”  (Bret Michaels)

That’s a pretty simple thought and one that everyone can probably say about their own life. We all encounter adversities (thorns) in life and most of us can probably also point to beautiful moments (the roses) in our lives. A good number of us probably spent much of our lives focused upon doing things to avoid the thorns – to reduce the risks that we may encounter. A few spend their lives so focused upon the good things in life that they may become classified as Pollyannas.

Things that happen in our lives are often the result of actions that we consciously took – what we reached for in life – and not just happenstance. It might seem like a decision that turned our bad was made without thought, but that is seldom really the case. That decision may have been made out of a lack of concern for the consequences or perhaps was made based upon pre-conceived notions or prejudices; but there was some thought put into it, albeit not good thoughts.

You can take control of your life if you start by understanding that you will encounter thorns. These are usually things that you cannot control. All that you can control is how you react to them. If you reach out and grab the thorns they will hurt you. If you are cautious and careful you may be able to get through the situation without pain and maybe even be able to find the rose at the end of that thorny stem.

That is why it is so much better to stop and think about what you are about to do than to stop later and ask why you just did that. There are no take-backs in life, no do-overs; but there can be, “Wait, What, Why”, moments that can save you embarrassment or worse later.

Stopping to think about something before you react does not mean becoming paralyzed by indecision. Self-control is just a part of good decision making. Recognizing the risks and possible outcomes is another part. The final part is applying the moral compass that otherwise guides your life to the situation at hand. Hopefully that involves doing the right thing and not just the convenient or self-serving thing. That is where your faith comes into play. That is the WWJD input into your decisions.

All of this can take place in a split second. There are few real “no-brainer” moments in life; however there are many “I didn’t think” moments that we can all look back upon.

We get what we reach for. Think about it.

2 Comments | faith, Inspiration | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Norm Werner