Rose.

It is my baby sister's middle name.
She's in Baraboo, WI right now. 
I miss her.

But why I bring up the floral paradox (aka "the rose") is because I heard the other day, (while I was briefly watching the crazy-ridiculous show called "The View"), that President Obama and his girls sit down every night to talk about their day.  They call it the rose and the thorn.  The rose would, obviously, be the highlight of the day, and the thorn...well, the lowlight. 

So.  My rose.

Falling on my face in front of lots of people at church.

The thorn.

Falling on my face in front of lots of people at church.

Can the rose and the thorn be the same thing?  Well, I say it can.  Heck, they're on the same plant for crying out loud.  I fell on my face today.  Twice.  I fell once while I was coming out of the chairs (and I was trying to go too fast), and I totally lost control of my crutches.  It was, like, a movie-perfect scene; my crutches flew up in the air and then came crashing down, I face-planted into the seats, and groaned really loudly, "OH!  OH man!"  Sound like a thorn?  Maybe, maybe not...it was pretty dang embarrassing.  I was fine, and it's okay if you laugh.  But here's why it was the rose: for the first time ever, I got to STAND up when invited by the worship leader!  YA-YUH!!  It was pretty exciting.  I was a dancing fool.  That's what came right before I biffed it.  It was worth it.  (Confession: I may miss my wheelchair more than I thought I would...)

Fall number two came while I was walking towards my exit route.  It had sort of become a parade, if you will, because I was going pretty slow.  I was preparing a joke for the people behind me, and as I started to say, "I"m going to move over into the slow lane" (aka move to the right of the hallway), my foot caught the floor and I faceplanted.  Again.  Also pretty funny.  Kind of a thorn...lots of people watched me do it, and my left knee cap is a little perturbed.  But it was also kind of a rose because a very nice gentleman, who I'll "Jesusathaway", was right there next to me after I did it, ready to help me up.  He's such a nice man, and his family is awesome.  I was up & at em' before you could say, "Pay attention to where you are going, Catherine Ann.  No jokes while you are on crutches."

Part of me wishes someone I knew was beside me so I could yell, "He tripped me!  She tripped me!!"  I wish I had thought of that even if I didn't know who was around me.  Wouldn't that have been a great way to welcome someone new to my church.

So.  The moral of my rose/thorn story is that God continues to keep me safe, even as I continue to fall.  I'm so thankful that my legs are healing properly, and I'm so thankful that I have been able to stand up for the last couple of weeks, even if I have been a little wobbly.  I'm so thankful that, in God's grace, roses come with the thorns.  Proof of God's faithfulness, even at the very beginning: 

 To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’

 “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life.  It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field..."
- Genesis 3:17&18

The roses outweigh the thorns, my friends.  Even though we fall, God still gives us so much to be thankful for.