The Blossom

"What you don't see with your eyes, don't witness with your mouth."

I try to refrain from making generalizations, blanket statements that shouldn't be applied to everyone. However, I believe all of us are guilty for gossipping at one time or another. I once heard someone say that trying to undo a rumor is like trying to unring a bell. Once it has been spoken, it reverberates and branches out to depths not anticipated when the whisper was first spoken.

A drop of water. A ripple effect.

Maybe you're guilty of it too. I know I am. Or maybe you've been victim of someones bitter tongue. I know I have been.

She said what about me?

Gossip can lash out with an unseen force, its scars are sometimes unseen but they imprint on one's soul ensuring you carry with you someone elses opinion and label for who they think you are. And while we learn of what other's negative views of us are we become guilty for gossip too. We're talking about being talked about.

But it's not always easy to hear bitter things and promptly put them away. And where do you put something that has brushed your heart? There's no internal filofax for hurtful words. Is there?

Sometimes I have ideas of what I want to write about but I will first look up the topic online to gain some sort of inspiration on where I want to take the topic. Maybe it's a quote, or a song. Sometimes I find a picture, or I take one that ends up inspiring to write the words that had teetered on the edge of my fingertips. Today I googled (ick...I googled) one word: "gossip". I expected some witty quote or powerful paragraph to pop up that would be the perfect match for what I was looking for. Instead the entire first page of search results returned things like "HOT celebrity gossip!" "GOSSIP on myspace!" and links similar to the aforementioned.

We live in a world obsessed with celebrities and gossip. We're swallowed by needing to know when, in reality, we really don't need to know.

And while these things surround us they also unknowingly can consume us. This week I heard several things that have been said about me to others. I've been gossipped about. And while defending myself, I caught myself saying things like "ha! She's one to talk!" and "Really..THAT coming from HER?" And thus I gossip too.

And it when I look at myself I see that chapter of who I am as withered and faded. A loss of vitality and sustenance of the person I want to be. When you look at a flower, it's easy to focus on the brown and worn withered edges. But we can all strive to be a beautiful blossom growing in hope, growing in patience, growing in peace.

Bitter tongues can blossom into beautiful petals.

I took the photo below this past spring while at a glass exhibit at a local botanical garden. The pink bloom captured me. It's soft beauty protruding from needles. Pure beauty from the thorns of the cactus plant. It serves to remind me that I can not change sharp words spoken that I later regret. I can't change what someone else is or what they say about me or my husband. And I cannot control being punctured by someone needles of gossip. But from the sharp cut can come something beautiful. And that is the blossom.