Staying Alive

I’m starting off my week with a little dahlia love. ?

These are all new dahlias that I bought and planted earlier this year since the big arctic blast killed all the tubers that I had left to over-winter in the ground. I had high hopes for lots and lots of big, showy blooms, but like everything else in my yard this year, they have struggled to really take off. 

I was doing some garden cleanup up over the weekend, and even though it was a bummer not to have the bounty of dahlia blooms that I have had in previous years, I was feeling really grateful to have had any blooms at all. Somehow they managed to make it through both a nasty mole infestation and our late-summer drought. 

Maybe my dahlias didn’t thrive this year, but at least they survived. And that is something to celebrate and be grateful for.

It seems to me that life is a lot like this too. How some years we thrive and flourish and bloom wildly, while other years it feels like a struggle just to survive. I know I have experienced both, and I’m guessing you have too.

Sometimes I don’t think we give ourselves enough credit for hanging in there and holding on during the hard seasons of life. I’m wondering what it would look like if we celebrated surviving much as we did thriving. Because I truly believe there are blessings to be found in both seasons.

Love, Kelly