Prune

For three years my rosebush hasn't bloomed. It has steadily looked more sickly and sad. Not much new leaf growth, very sparse, not growing up at all. I was unsure of how to make it better, and felt like I was the wrong person to care for what seemed like a temperamental and delicate plant. 

One day, I pruned it. I had been putting it off because I still felt like I didn't know what I was doing, but I figured that it couldn't make things worse, so I plucked off leaves and snapped off branches. Every time I removed another part of the plant I thought, "Am I doing this right? Am I going to end up killing this poor thing?" As I made a pile of twigs and brown-spotted leaves, the bush looked even more forlorn and neglected with each pass. I tossed the clippings in the trash and hoped my rose bush would at least gain some new leaves and not look so naked and sad. I barely had the most minuscule hope that it would bloom.

Over the next several months, I watched in amazement as new leaves sprouted, shiny and green and healthy. The bush grew twice its size, and when I saw multiple flower buds I just about teared up as I realized the power of this example as a metaphor for life:

Pruning is essential in personal growth. 

Sometimes when we're in the midst of stripping away old thought patterns and long-held beliefs and plucking off old perspectives, we can wonder if there's going to be anything left of us. We wonder if it's even possible to flourish when so much of our identity has been discarded. We feel naked without our self-protective foliage, even if it was toxic. 

And then...

new life. 

The removal of the old makes way for the new to emerge—

new thoughts, new perspectives, new ideas, new passions, new relationships, new love, new joy, new aliveness, new wholeness,

and we bloom.