It's been a minute

I love the way things look so different close up. 

Kind of like people.

The closer you look at someone, the better you really see them. 

I wish I could say that a close up view always reveals the beauty, some of us feed the ugliness.

I think everyone has a beautiful potential inside them.

However, sometimes we get the ugly. 

You are what you feed yourself.

A lot of people survive on drama, anger, abuse either of others or themselves.  

Occasionally you have to back up and walk away, or admire from a distance.  

Once in a while I'll find bees asleep inside a flower and I'm careful to stay back and let them rest. 

Just as you can give someone advice and then let it be, especially if they ignore it and keep complaining of the same things.  

You're only frustrating yourself. 

I read something today that said someone can't let you down unless they were holding you up in some way. 

We're all human, flawed.

Yet somehow we manage to set expectations of perfection. 

God is perfect, people are not. 

And while we should never tolerate abuse or constant wrong treatment and toxicity.....there has to be a measure of allowance. 

You can cut someone off for your well being and still pray for them.

You can dislike someone and still treat them with basic respect and kindness. 

Because if we treat others as we have been treated, we start growing some ugly inside of us as well. 

Someone will come along, take a closer look at us, and see what we saw in others that made us step back. 

I can't be so busy looking at you that I grow something undesirable in myself.  

I have to tend my own garden, weed my own soil,  and watch my relationship with my gardener; Christ. 

Because regardless of what you decide to do, in the end I have to answer for myself alone. 

I want that close up look to be beautiful and joyous.  So much so that my ugliness is drowned out by it.