I Didn't Know What I Had Until I Realized It Wasn't Mine

I took a rock from the Grand Canyon. It’s a nice rock. It’s a jagged chunk of brown, red, and white sandstone a little bigger than my fist. I would have taken a bigger piece if I could have fit it in my backpack. I would have taken the entire thing if no one was looking. Seriously, it’d make a great backyard.

But that’s not possible, and not just because it’s really big, but because it’s a National Park guarded by people in green uniforms that love it more than me, so much so that they will protect it so others can love it too.

No one really owns the Grand Canyon. It belongs to no one, but everyone at the same time. It wasn’t meant to be owned. It was created to be shared. I can’t have it.

Canyons can’t be moved, sunsets are moments that cannot be caught…they come ago without my permission, and flowers die when I pick them.

They are bigger than me. The Grand Canyon is much too large for my shelf or my backyard. Others need to see what I would hide for myself. Canyons, sunsets, and flowers have something to teach us about God and ourselves. They have a beauty to share with us. I can’t keep them. To do so would be to deny others this.

The very thing that keeps me alive—air—is shared and not owned. I can try to keep it, to hold it in, but I would die. Oxygen is to be breathed in, and out, not held or trapped. The truth about air, is true about those given it.

I have begun to realize that people are more like canyons, sunsets, and flowers than they are cars, houses, or cloths.

People are shared with me, they are not objects to be owned.

Being in a relationship is more like hiking a trail than it is taking up residence. And people are not decorations, but views to be taken in. They are a part of God’s creation not my wardrobe.

It’s not really about me choosing them either. Some are like cornfields, rain clouds, and shruberries. All beautiful in their own light, important, and deserving of my time and love, even if they aren’t picked out, don’t fit me well, or feel like family.

Not too long ago I came across the most beautiful flower I’d ever seen... But she was not mine to own...to pick, to put in vase, and place on a shelf...for she would have died there. Her beauty and light were too big for me, too important. The world needs this flower.

This past weekend I was reunited with some friends…the “for life” kind. A few are in Michigan now, some still in Ohio, some in Indiana, a couple in North Carolina, and one in Utah. I wish we could all be neighbors again. I wish I could have them here in Texas. But the truth is, I can’t. I don’t own them. I don’t decide where they are to be placed. For them to be anywhere but there (where He puts them) would be for them like dying. They are too big me, too important. They must share their beauty and love with others…those who do not know it yet. I can’t stop that because that’s what it’s all about.

The strange thing is; the things that I own do not last. Like cars, cloths, and guitars (sorry to get away from my original illustration but I don't have a house) . Eternal things can only be shared. And the more I realize this, the more life is sweet.

I never knew what I had, until I realized it wasn’t mine.

Along this journey of life there have been some amazing views and some most beautiful flowers. “And every time I’m place within a perfect row…people come and go” (Stephen Delopoulos). And at times I have fought this, longing to stay, to stay forever. And at times I’ve wanted to take beauty with me to keep my soul lit. But a Voice keeps calling me forward and a Wisdom keeps telling me that others need to see and hear these things too. To share them is far better than to keep them. It makes me feel like I’m a part of something big…something bigger than myself.