The Third Thing…

Look at that! It amazes me every time I see it.

“…but there is a third thing you must do.” said Alice’s grandfather to Alice in the children’s book, Miss Rumfius by Barbara Cooney.

“What is that?” asked Alice.

“You must do something to make the world more beautiful,” said her grandfather.

And when Alice grew old and completed numbers one and two, she decided that she would “complete the third, and the most difficult thing of all. All that summer Miss Rumphius, her pockets full of seeds, wandered over fields and headlands sowing lupines… Fields and hillsides were covered with blue and purple and rose-colored flowers. They bloomed along the highways and down the lanes. Bright patches lay around the schoolhouse and back of the church. down in the hollows and along the stone walls grew the beautiful flowers.”

What is your third thing going to be? Perhaps you are still working on it…

Happy Earth Day Celebration this week!

Cooney, B. (1982). Miss Rumfius. New York, NY: Viking.

You are Beautiful

We like to look at ourselves in the mirror. We can’t help it. We check to see if broccoli is in our teeth, our clothes look right, or our hair looks good– (if we have hair). Although non of us look perfect we still try to look and evaluate and alter our look to make us feel like we look better.

But cancer attacks from the inside and becomes an interior invasion which is damaging to our “look,” even if the source cannot be seen in a mirror. Even though we judge our outward appearances it is really how we feel from our inside that truly makes “our look.”

When you are told there is an evil darkness lurking under your skin, growing inside of you, there isn’t only an evil demon with one horrific objective  but also a feeling of ugliness that does not show in the mirror but hurts really really badly. You feel ugly and dirty and broken from deep inside and that, I believe is far worse than feeling it on the outside. It attacks who you are made of from the heart and soul.

But, I received some powerful advice about this that I want to share. It is this:

“No one can cut your spirit!”

Nor can they burn, poke, poison, break, radiate, amputate, neuter, sever, etc.

We are made from God. He made us in his image and our spirits are made of the same substance that he is made of; light and love. No matter what happens to the little house we call our body, our spirit is beautiful and always loved.

So for those of you who are feeling this dark, ugliness from the inside because of a diagnosis called cancer I just wanted to remind you…

Your are beautiful inside and out!