I can’t tell you how many times I have gotten pricked by a sharp thorn while handling roses and so I began to wonder….why do roses have thorns? I looked it up and read that because roses have such a lovely fragrance, they are attractive to herbivores and the thorns keep them from being eaten.  The thorns grow before the bud opens and so the thorns help the rose to blossom so beautifully.

I began to wonder…..do I have thorns?  What parts of me, my personality do I have that protect me from others?  Do my thorns help me or have they become too barbed?  Am I sometimes ‘sharp’ with my words?  Do I pierce through and cause others to ‘bleed’ so that I can blossom and show my beauty?  Do I not let others get too close because they might want too much of me, to swallow me up?

We all need boundaries, they are healthy and necessary or else we do run the risk of being ‘eaten up’, but perhaps it’s important to take a look at our ‘thorns’ from time to time and make sure that they don’t become too ‘sharp’.