Rocks

My oldest son started a bad habit his first year of school. The school that he went to had several large trees that dropped “nuts”. Our son would grab hand full’s of these “nuts and place them in his pocket. He has passed this habit on to his younger brother. The items they place in their pockets (who knows for what reason) have changed. Sometimes we find dandelion heads, or leaves, very often we find rocks, pebbles are probably a more appropriate term, but they are still rocks.

Recently I was taking clothes out of the washer and dryer and found several rocks that had escaped our pre-wash search. As I was taking the rocks out of the washer and dryer I was a little frustrated. “Why do the boys pick up these rocks and leave them in their pockets? “ I thought to myself. As I was asking the question a memory hit me. When I was younger my family had a ranch southwest of our hometown. When we would go to the ranch my brother and I would take “hikes” and find all sorts of beautiful or unique rocks. We would pick up these rocks and take them to Mom so she could see the wonderful treasures we had found. We also wanted to bring these treasures home, but Mom would always tell us that they wouldn’t look as unique at home. Sometimes we would listen to her and leave the rocks to be rediscovered later, but sometimes we smuggled some home. After a few days or sometimes a few weeks we would pull out our rock treasures to marvel at what we had found and brought home. It never failed, every time we pulled these treasures out all we had were just a bunch of rocks.

These memories started me thinking. How many times are we like those rocks my brother and I used to smuggle home? In our natural environment we sparkle we shine, we are beautiful, we are unique, but when we are taken out of our natural environment we look a little plain, we don’t look as special…

I hope you never have to suffer from being taken out of your “natural environment” and look plain and ordinary. I hope that you can find your “natural environment” so that you can sparkle and shine, and show the world your uniqueness.