Beauty & Elegance

I received this yesterday.... a gift from a beautiful friend and I'm in love with it. It's just so pure and simple yet elegant and luxurious.... can it be those things all at once?

To be honest I have never felt worthy or need for such beauty and luxury...why? I dug down real deep into my heart....and found a few reasons why.

1. I have never known what I like or love when it comes to things, clothes, hairstyles, jewelry etc...so its been easier to just go with whatever and let someone else tell me what I like.... that way I'll be right. Even to write that I see that is warped.

2. I have spent so long feeling like beauty and elegance as wasteful, vain and superficial. This has stemmed from being on such a stringent budget for so long, experiencing lack and going without.

3. More recently seeing, smelling and feeling the poverty, and hearing the stories makes me feel so guilty for having things when others simply do not have even the bare basics.

These past few weeks I have mentally been hibernating. Massive events have happened in my family, and I just needed some mental space to sort through it all, to recover....to nourish and nurture myself and my family. They aren't all bad mind you.... we bought a house! Amazing! But even an emotional high can be exhausting.

I have left my work for @lovingarmsnz for 2 weeks just doing the bare minimum to keep it ticking along because to be fully present and engaged...meeting people where they are at, loving them can be taxing and over time makes me not enjoy it and very tearful. It's not the place I want to be.

But I'm back from my space, my mental vacay.....and learning to appreciate beauty and kindness for myself.

This flower will remind me that rest, beauty and elegance, kindness and love are gifts...gifts that I'm worthy of...gifts from God himself and it's ok to enjoy them, to rest in them, to love them...in fact he loves that I do.

"I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living!" Ps 27:13