Beauty Divided

Today I learned something new. I work a couple of mornings a week with the very darling Nelda. She is a young and active 94 year old. This morning she decided we would divide her African Violets. We carried the pots to the back porch and filled them with the soil made especially for African Violets. We took the large and overgrown one out of its pot....and began to divide it. I was amazed how easily it came apart. The plant had multiplied so there were five separate plants crammed into that one pot. We pulled off the lower limbs, placed them in the special pots Nelda had made in her ceramics class, and added the soil.



We then added the African Violet food to the water and filled the bottom pot with it. I had carried out one plant in one pot...but I carried in 5 plants in 5 pots. It was beautiful to see how the beauty was divided. Just as it was a new start for those pretty purple flowers, it was a new start for me. I learned something new and I have one more thing on my to-do list...buy myself an African Violet!

I Am Different Now

I am different now. Some days I look back and I think, "What the #%$@ happened to my life." I was happy way back when. I was a wife and a mother. That is what I longed for in this world. I volunteered, I scrap booked, I did family history. I baked, I lunched, I cleaned, I served. I did all the things that brought me, as a woman, satisfaction. We women are nurturers. It is not in my nature to bring home the bacon. Yet here I am, running to and fro, doing what I can to financially survive divorce and single parenthood.

I am not in a bad place in my life. That is to say that things could be a whole lot worse. I live in a nice house that I made into a home. It doesn't quite feel like home yet, but I do love to walk around and look and touch and smell all the things that I have brought into these four walls or planted outside. I marvel that I created this place. A place for me and for mine. But I am still new here. I am still adjusting to this new place on the cul-de-sac, but more importantly, this new place in life.

Each day I tend to listen a little more and speak a little less. At one time I thought I knew it all, understood it all, had it all. But then I realized I know very little and understand even less. And the only things I have are those that my Heavenly Father has decided to share with me.

I have been blessed over the last few months to spend time with some of the more "seasoned" individuals in this world. They sometimes say little, but the words they do speak hold significant meaning. They are not afraid to tell me I am seeing things wrong or heading the wrong direction. I listen, unoffended, taking in their wise counsel. Knowing they have been where I now stand. Knowing that although the world has changed significantly, the truths still hold.

I enjoy learning. Life experience has taught me so much. I like who I am now. I still wish for a gentleman to share my life with, but I like that I don't feel as if I have the world by the tail. I like that with the sorrows has come humility. A dependence on the Lord and on others.

I am truly being transformed.

Sometimes I am happy I have forgotten the old me. Sometimes I wish I could have a do-over. But that is not what this life is about. If anything, I can see progress. And to me progress makes everything okay. As Maya Angelou once said, "When you know better, you do better." Sometimes we are the teacher, and sometimes we are the student. But never should we be only one. If we are only the teacher, we miss out on a world of learning. And if we are only the student, we do not share that which we have learned.

I am different now, but that is okay. My only hope is that I am better. Better than before.