Spider Webs and Thoughts

This morning when I sat down at my computer I realized I had walked through a spider web on one side of my desk. I use the computer every day. Every. Single. Day. The spider web had not been there at 11 p.m. the night before, yet at 6 a.m.—there it was. It made me realize again how fast life changes.

Sometimes the fast changes in life are heartbreaking—the sudden death of a loved one or the sudden diagnosis of a horrific disease. Perhaps a sudden accident with life-changing results. But health and happiness spring from focusing on all the times sudden life changes are good.

Just as quickly as a heart is broken…it can heal. Depression and despair can lift off a life just as gently as rays of morning sun sliding over treetops. An answered prayer. The birth of a baby. The opening of a bud. The ripening of the first tomato. Life’s little miracles, often overlooked, but always precious.

“Whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of a good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things.” Philippians 4:8.

Life can change for the better in a flash of a thought.

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The Change Rose

Another name for hydrangeas is “change roses.” Hydrangeas are small bushes in the southern U.S. where I grew up. In Scotland with all the rain, they can grow into small trees.

Size is not what earned hydrangeas they nickname “change roses.” They range in color from white, to blue, to light purple, to dark purple, to pink, to red. White hydrangeas lack color pigment and can’t be manipulated to change their colors. The color of other hydrangeas depends on the presence of aluminum ions in the soil and how the plant absorbs them according to the acidity of the soil.

We are like hydrangeas. What surrounds us that we see, hear, and read changes the focus of our hearts and the direction of our thoughts. Immerse ourselves in negativity, profanity, and impure thoughts and we become soiled like a white garment before flood waters. Proverbs 23:7 says, “As he thinks in his heart, so is he.” Jesus said, “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.”

The good news about being change roses is that we control the change. We have freedom to decide what we allow to enter through our ears and eyes and what we allow to come out of our mouths. Hydrangeas are static and have no choice but to absorb the soil around their roots and bloom accordingly. We can change our soil by moving: getting up to turn off the TV; refusing to allow negative or toxic people to rent space in our minds; turning a polluted conversation into a clean conversation, going for a walk to remove ourselves from human contamination.