There is abundance here—and it is knocking around screaming to be used and given away.
I have these tulips sitting in a miIk jar on my kitchen table.
I stood before them at WholeFoods a couple of days ago, wondering if they were worth the price—$12.99 for 15 stems. They serve no purpose but beauty, after all.
A few years ago, I wouldn’t have thought twice about picking them up, placing them delicately in my cart, and moving on to find some ripe bananas. LET THERE BE BEAUTY! I’d have cried in the inner recesses of my heart. No matter the cost.
But that was before, and this is now. And now I am a girl that measures the cost of everything.
I’m not just talking about money (though you better believe I buy those store-brand peanut butter crackers and not the Ritz ones—what a racket!). No. Now, I also reason in the currency of time. In emotional energy. In hope—and in its potential for disappointment. I hoard and ration it all, because I have known what it is like to dole it out and play Russian roulette with the wellness of my spirit. Of my soul I have written, “It’s a barren wasteland in there.” And I have meant it.
And in my fierce determination to get out of that place, I’ve spent the last couple of years on a mission of omission: weighing the cost of every decision against the limited offerings my soul is willing to cough up.
There are seasons for this. Decrease is necessary. Healthy. Essential. After deep grief and great trials,
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