3-21-10                 2:54am

There is a daisy bush in my back yard. At least that’s what I call it. I want to be like this bush. It has taught me a lesson.

This bush has never flourished. It had flowers when we moved in but I wouldn’t say it called out to me as completely alive. Then a few winters ago everything froze. All our plants died. The grass was covered with ice, which is weird considering this is SoCal. And the daisy bush all but died. In fact, half of it literally turned white. It was sad. We weren’t sure what to do. We just left it. It would have a few flowers here and there. Mom wanted to just leave it and see if it would come back on its own. I just wanted to get rid of the thing and plant something else, which really means it would’ve turned into weeds cuz we don’t plant things. But one day Mom went out there and tried to break off a small piece of the white part in the hopes that maybe that would help. To her surprise, that whole side came off.

So now we have half a daisy bush. You can see where the other half once was. It’s still white. But a funny thing happened. It started to bloom. That bush has more flowers on it now than ever. When I look at it now I can’t help but smile. It just needed to lose the dead weight. Like painful things in our lives, we were afraid to take that piece off. Mom avoided it. I would’ve rather killed the thing. But facing the problem, getting rid of the pain brought healing.

I want to be like the daisy bush. I want to have the courage to prune those things from my life that cause me distress and steal my happiness or convince me to give it away. I want to be strong enough and to be willing to endure the pain of that loss in order to get to the beauty. I can do it. It’s the only way. I want to be like the daisy bush, fully in bloom, to thrive and to flourish.

©Michelle Routhieaux 2010