There’s only one left, it’s bright green with fern-like stems. The spindly arms reach across vacant space like a long sighing stretch across an empty morning bed.

The tiny little succulents I planted in my mama’s broken pot were pretty, fragile and spongy little blooms living all together on a cushion of soil.

I’d placed them in a spot easy to glance toward in the pauses of my morning. The sun just creeping in, warm and soft seeping in of light.

 

I captured its beauty and made it social, this collection on an old desk. The image, a chic little space reminding of a page from a thick magazine. All of my  “friends” liked it and I felt proud like maybe my home was in some fancy city place or at least just across town, requiring a sticker on my car to make my way through a gate to home.

This world we live in is mostly image and filtered truths and concocted conclusions.

A place where we all suppose each other’s lives are better than ours because of a filtered glimpse of a moment or two.

I’m guilty I know; both in the seeking of attention and my enamored responses to what I perceive as a life more beautiful than my own.

A friend called last week and we talked for over an hour. She’s a beautiful young mama. She’s smart, she’s loving, her girls are bubbly, beautiful with sweet cherub faces and snaggle tooth smiles. Her husband’s handsome and kind.

They’ve recently renovated an older home, beautiful hard woods and crisp colors, clean whites and just a newness made from old.

I thought she might be calling to talk work or future collaborative opportunities. Instead, she called to get my advice, to see if the way she was handling a troubling issue would be the way I’d react.

I was surprised. She was struggling and rightly so. I was sorry to hear of her struggle.

I still am.

I just listened, it was what she needed.  Then I  spoke some hard truths she already knew.

I hoped my lack of solution cushioned with acknowledgement  of her scary truth somehow caused her to continue in prayer, in faith, and in challenging someone she cared about to care about herself.

I am thinking of her still. I can see her girls gettin’ tucked into bed by now and their little bedrooms maybe soft with night lights giving warm aura on freshly painted walls.

I told my friend I am praying for a breakthrough.

Because, I am.

I hope to hear soon that it has come.

That God came through for my friend who allowed me a glimpse into her life,

Unfiltered.

I’m linking up with Jennifer Dukes Lee to shares stories of His story, visit here.