Perfect Imperfect Beings

Have you ever truly looked at a rose? A newly bloomed rose in all its natural glory. This morning I was standing at my bathroom window when this perfect little garnet rose peeping out from behind my husband’s truck called my name.
I went down to the rose tree, and looked in wonder at this little lone rose that had bloomed overnight and was waiting for someone to appreciate it. Looking at it took my breath away. Smelling it heightened my senses and I suddenly thought it really is true that out of the thorn bush comes the most beautiful rose. I witnessed it for myself and realised that we are always striving for perfection. Always feeling that if we aren’t perfect, we are failures. This little rose told me today that imperfection and perfection go hand in hand. The rose that bloomed was perfect, its petals perfectly formed, tight with each one making room for the other to form the most beautiful product of nature. Yet it sits atop a spiny and thorny stem – imperfection at its best. But it is this imperfection that protects the rose from its predators and allows it to bloom unthreatened and free.
And then I realised that’s what our lives are all about – our imperfections allow us to become the perfect person we truly are inside. My beautiful garnet rose did not try to hide its imperfect thorny stem from me but I did not see it until I went to cut the rose to bring inside with me. But when I cut the rose and examined it, I understood that imperfection and perfection are one in the same. I have walked by that little rose tree every day and forgot it was there until the perfection of the newly bloomed rose caught my eye because it had bloomed into exactly what it was meant to be. I brought it inside and placed it on my desk, its sweet perfume intoxicating my sense of smell, letting me know that sometimes we have to grow thorns before we bloom into the person we are meant to be – before we can display our natural beauty to the world, before we can be what we need to be.
Next time you see a rose in its natural environment, stop, look and smell it and you will find that all of your senses are awakened to the natural beauty of the world we live in – thorns and all. Side by side illustrating that we are all perfect imperfect beings.