Yesterday, I called a friend who was feeling down. I shared from my own experience how the soul beckons us back to who we are – pure love, pure joy. I told her my story of learning how to love myself. I never thought of this story as funny, but she was laughing so hard that something in it must have been funny. Trust me, at the time, it was ANYTHING other than funny!

She said… “I have tears coming out of my eyes and they feel like not happy tears, but I’m laughing at the same time.”

That’s kind of what it feels like when you begin to return to the true you. It feels really sad at first. Like, HOW could I not care for myself anymore than this? HOW could I possibly have THOUGHT I loved myself when OBVIOUSLY I’ve been deluding myself! And your ego will really grieve how you didn’t see it all along. You might even sprinkle in some course critical comments about how “stupid” you’ve been. But, slowly, you begin again.

And the fog clears.

Then YOU get to come back and make some clear choices, and see that you really are amazing and brilliant. And wonder how ANYONE wouldn’t be able to see that – including you!

The rose is a symbol of completion…wholeness. I’ve seen this symbol so often over the years in readings – rosebuds for people who were just about to open, roses that were opening and closing for people who were saying – I want to, I don’t want to, I want to, I don’t want to, white roses, red roses, roses covered in snow, roses floating in the ocean, but mostly, I see roses and I experience the loving beauty as God wants to say… I see you!

I went to the dentist last week, and the receptionist typed in my birthday wrong so on my record it said I was 57 years old. When the dentist came out to the lobby, he looked around and was confused – where was the 57 year old?

He called my name, I responded and we walked back to the patient area. There, another assistant looked at me in a puzzled way. She said, “How old are you?” And I replied, “I’m 40.”

She looked at the screen, looked at me again, and said, “When is your birthday?” I gave her my digits as she updated the record, then she looked at me again. “How old did you say you are?”

“I’m 40,” I said. “I’m sure you were really confused looking for a 57 year old!”

The other dentist said, “I thought, wow, way to go – looking good for nearly 60!”

Then the assistant said, “You look like you are in your late 20s – possibly early 30s, but certainly not 40 and not anywhere near 57!”

We laughed as I shared various stories about how people have asked me if I’ve ‘ever’ stepped out into the sun a day in my life.

All vanity aside, sometimes it is nice to have these experiences where people who have no clue who you are, have no idea about what you care about simply say…good job. No one seemed to bring up the idea that I’m overweight…or that I was there because my crown broke a tooth (lovely)…or that I had thrown my hair up into a bun that day without much thought.

It makes me think about how sometimes we can only see what we want to see. See, what isn’t right, what isn’t perfect, what isn’t real…and just as easily, we can see what is beautiful. YOU are beautiful…just like this sweet, sweet lady… can you see her beautiful spirit?

I remember when I was a kid, my grandmother would take me to the nursing home with her. This was long, long before the swanky retirement villages of today – many of these people were very ill and very old. I remember how comfortable I felt there – and how safe I felt. Perhaps it was partly due to my grandmother, but I believe it was more that these people had an incredible amount of love to share and I didn’t want anything from them – we could just ‘be’ ourselves together. Me, hugging them and loving them just for who they were, and them loving me and loving me for who I was. This photo reminds me of those people…and of my grandmother when she got much, much older lost to Alzheimers and talking about stuffed bunnies that bite. If we are lucky, we too, someday will grow very, very old.