treasure

They spend an entire summer apart on two different continents. All summer Bean counts down the days 'till her friend will return. (This year I received an earful for scheduling a camping trip over the weekend that her buddy would return. The horrors!)

And then they reunite. And it's sweet...like one of those scenes in a movie where they run towards each other in slow-mo, arms open wide, running into each other in a collide of laughter and love and hugs. It has been this way for the last four summers. The scene is always the same.

Last night as the sun was dipping they were out at the park (it's now been a week since their reunion) and I brought my camera to catch this shot above: two young girls who treasure each other. They are always giddy to be with each other and it shows.

Their love for each other is demonstrative. When you treasure something it shows in outward manifestations, the fruit of your passion. Want to know what you really treasure? Look at where you focus your mental, emotional, and physical attention. Is it money, your appearance, someone in your life, being known, your "rights", being "right" , success? If it was diagrammed into a huge pie chart, it would be the largest slice of the pie.

I thought about that huge pie chart. Painfully and honestly drew it before me on my mental wall and stood back and looked at it. (Try it.) When I did I found it was quite discomforting. No, disturbing is really a better word. Because when I viewed the pie chart it was not the one that I thought I would see. You see I am often pretty good at convincing myself with my words.  I tell myself and others (even you) that I "cherish" my family, my loved ones, helping the needy, my faith, but the pie chart I would draw is horribly skewed because of my own convincing dishonesty. The authentic pie chart gives me away by my actions, because my actions reveal what I truly treasure in my heart.

There are a couple of well known sayings that state: For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. And...The root bears the fruit. Two inescapable spiritual laws that do a pretty good job of bringing to light the discrepancies between our two pie charts. I could go around and around in circles with this but I think you know what I am talking about.

treasure: to keep or regard as precious; cherish; value highly; hoard

Here is where I could tell you to go treasure your kids, your spouse, friendships, your faith, this present moment, but I think you already know what is important. The harder task is being honest with ourselves over the contradictions between our words and actions and doing the work to make those two match.

In other words, you might make better use of your time to uncover the truth about what you already treasure and decide if you need to remove it from the storeroom of your heart, so that you could replace it with the things that are truly worth treasuring.

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Thanks for joining me during my Verb week. I have to tell you that I had no idea what my verbs were going to be. I let the pictures speak to me and then did a little listening. Was actually a great project for me. Gonna do more of that in future!
Have a great weekend! Totally treasuring Friday! (I think that's a pretty safe thing to treasure.)
xoxo