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When the weather outside is frightful....

Sometimes in order to preserve beauty, you have to kill it.
Though things are going quite well as they are and everything seems hunky-dory, you have to take it away from its comfortable living conditions in order to save it from the harsh weather that is eminent.

Just this past week I cut one of the nearly blossoming yellow tulips from my front yard because I knew that the weather was supposed to turn sour this weekend and I wanted to save this delicate little flower from the frost. I wanted to enjoy its life-giving warm color from the inside of our house even as the snow raged furious outside. I wanted to give this flower a chance to do what it was designed to do--add beauty to the cold slumber of awaiting spring.

So I picked it. I plucked it. I had Katie put it in a vase and gave it all the water and sunlight it could ever want.

It blossomed yesterday and today it stands on our kitchen window sill, proudly displaying its full beauty as it defies the snow through the pane of protection that guarded it from the harsh elements inches away.

I wonder...is love ever like a flower? What are those times where we have to do what hurts in order to preserve the beauty of the love? Are there ever times when the only difference between cold, icy death and warm, breathing life is an invisible wall of protection that keeps the good in and the bad out? What is God's role in this flower relationship? Is God the gardener? The vase with the water? Or the pane of glass?

And for a light-hearted ending:
"Yeah, come on Jesus. Follow me already"

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