The launch weekend of Unbecoming was so awesome!  During this weekend, i received several special deliveries.  I don’t know about you, but next to online shopping, i love getting things i didn’t order.  The ding of the doorbell would sound and i would answer to find the most beautiful bouquets of flowers.  The words on each card touched my heart and the arrangements were so stunning they begged to be displayed.

I love fresh flowers.  I enjoy their fragrance.  The way flowers complete a room is delightful.

A week later, I was sitting on my couch folding laundry and i kept pulling the clothes close into my face.  I could not find the culprit.  These clothes are fresh out of the dryer where they have been washed in Tide, fabric softener and downy un-stoppables.  (I love the smell of laundry lol).  What was wrong?  I even stopped to do the SNL move – thinking maybe it was me.  What in the world is that smell?

Ahah!  At last i had found it.  It was my beautiful flowers.  The very thing that had brought me so much joy and beauty, now stunk so bad i couldn’t wait to throw it in the trash.  I immediately was reminded of Proverbs 31:20.  “Charm can mislead and beauty soon fades…”

Beauty soon fades.

What are you holding on to in your life that was once beautiful but now stinks?  Maybe like me, you don’t even recognize where the smell is coming from.  You might even be looking to cast blame on other things.  We grow attached to things that provide us beauty for a season and sometimes can hold onto them for a lifetime.  Can i just say this?  Men are not the only people who should take out the trash!  There is a difference between what you can recycle and what you can’t.  Sometimes we want to put trash in the recycle bin, and you just cannot do that!  Stop recycling something that you should have refused to live with along time ago!

I want to challenge you to take inventory of your life.  Are you the kind of person that sees trash and walks over it?  Are you the kind of person that is quick to sweep things under the rug?  Put in the effort to have the life God promises you.  Don’t place the responsibility on someone else.  Put in the work to find out what in world is that smell?  Then decide, is the beauty gone?  Am i trying to make what is dead come alive when it already served its season?  Don’t hold onto the dead things and deny the other things in your life the chance to bloom and bring beauty.

Xoxo,

Steph

P.s. A special thanks to my sister Renee, my dear friend Keisha, and the ladies of TKC for my beautiful flowers.