A Rare Saturday Post

Thursday, on my way home from work, I stopped by the grocery store.

We needed milk, bananas, paper towels, shampoo, Tylenol PM...

I walked in and saw these flowers.

I stopped.

I fell in love with the orange.

They had purple, too.

Oh, and some yellow (my favorite color).

I'm not a roses kind of girl necessarily.

I love different, unique.

After smelling the purples and the violets and the Gerber Daisies of all colors,

I put these orange beauties in my cart.

The price tag - $5.

Sometimes, I buy myself flowers.

I take them home.

I put them in a vase.

I add water and nutrients to them.

I put them on my table in the front room, or on my kitchen table.

I open the blinds in the morning to bring them sunlight.

I usually only buy them when they are $5.

I buy them for me.

I have finally learned, after 41 years, that I don't need someone else to buy me flowers to prove to me that I am worth it, that I am loved, that I am worthy of love.

I can prove that to myself.

$5 flowers remind me every time I look at them that I AM worth it. I AM loved. AND, I AM worth of love.

$5 flowers remind me to stop for a minute. 

Don't just walk right by the floral department that you have to walk by to get to the rest of the store.

Stop for a minute.

Look. Smell. Touch.

See the beauty. Smell the scent. Touch the fragile, sometimes broken petals.

$5 flowers remind me that we all need water and nutrients.

We all deserve to be in a clean, glass vase with a ribbon tied around it.

We all deserve to have sunlight and to be noticed.

The orange reminds me that Fall is almost here.

The orange reminds me that everything will die soon, so that it can come back to life even better and stronger and more beautiful in the Spring.

The orange reminds me that Heavenly Father has a plan.

And His plan is perfect. 

Orange reminds me that we live in a beautiful world... even if sometimes we need to look a bit harder to see it that way.

$5 flowers remind me to find joy in the journey.

Self Love

I am slowly, but very surely learning the value and necessity of self love. In a world where we are constantly seeing the very best of everyone's lives and comparing our worst to their best; in a world where nothing we ever do is good enough or worthy of love; in a world where we are constantly judged by others and ourselves; in a world where we consider ourselves very last on a list of things and people that are worthy of our love; in a world where people are cruel and the most cruel are usually ourselves... I am practicing self love. I have to remind myself to do it every hour of every day. But, I know that I am worth it. Not because of me, but because I am His daughter and my worth was set in stone before my mama pushed me out of her vagina!

Younique has forced me, literally, to post pictures of my dang self... to do Lives every single day, even on my very worst days when I don't want to show my face to anyone... to fill my well every day so that I CAN fill other peoples' wells also. We can't help others to see their worth if we don't value our own.

I LOVE that Younique has the ability, at least with me, to empower, validate and inspire. I am teaching myself these lessons every day. And, it might not seem like I'm doing a great job when you see all of the drama in my life with men who are cookoo for cocoa puffs... but what you don't see is me setting boundaries and saying, "No." "Not today, Scooter." Just because they are posting outrageous stories and Lives does not mean I have any communication with them. I don't. I am so dang proud of myself for learning that I am worth it and saying, "no."

I hope to be able to continue to inspire myself and love myself... especially because we can't count on the world to do it for us!