This past Valentine’s Day my adoring husband surprised me with a dozen roses and a heartbox of chocolates. While most Valentines come bearing an arm full of flowers for their special someone, my husband’s gesture surprised and caught me unaware as I don’t require gifts to feel loved with my love language being quality time.
Nevertheless, roses and chocolates from a man who wanted to say “I love you” in this thoughtful way put an unexpected smile on his wife’s face.
I sure do love the smell of roses.
Bending over a bouquet of flowers like my sweet granddaughter who also enjoys the simple pleasure of drinking in its fragrance too beautiful for words, I’m convinced roses came to us as heaven’s perfume.
Placed in a vase of water with a small kiss from the afternoon sun,
Roses wake in a gentle yawn and slowly stretch as a newborn baby,
revealing its hidden loveliness for our eyes to see.
As beautiful as a bouquet of roses are,
The lifespan of cut flowers taken from the vine is measured in breaths.
To frame and capture a vase of loveliness where every bloom retains its perfect softness, vibrant color and perfumed fragrance as a lifetime keepsake is a wonderful sentiment, but the passing of a few sunrises will reveal a roses destiny.
As beautiful as these roses were when they left their garden home,
A few days away from the vine that sustained its life, finds these blooms weeping slightly over, letting go and saying that first good-by to leaves that once provided it shade.
Such is the life we live.
Born into a mother’s arms perfect in every way, soft whose petals of life haven’t opened yet, until morning after morning a mother’s kiss stirs a yawn and a child’s stretch, opening and revealing a hidden destiny before our eyes.
Just as the lifespan of cut flowers taken from the vine is measured in breaths,
So are the days accounted to us; a mere breath.
Life is short.
14 Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.
James 4:14 (NIV)
Life is sweet.
In life we’re given a “heartbox of chocolates” filled with family to enjoy.
God our Valentine says “I love you” with those special someone’s given as our Valentine gift, a present of our favorites to satisfy the longings of our heart.
Life is sweet, but the thought remains that life is short,
Both measured in breaths.
May everyday find us bending over a garden like that small child captured by the lure of a flower’s smell; drinking in the moment of every moment she’s blessed with.
Because
Life is too sweet not to smell the roses.
Life is too short to be taking anything for granted.
Remembering the lifespan of cut flowers taken from the vine is measured in mere breaths.
Apples of Gold Encouragement 