“The RoseBouquet”

My friend April uses an apple theme on her site and mentioned yesterday that she thinks of her friends as apples. Some are sweet, some are tart, and some are harder to get into. Immediately I got to thinking how I’ve compared some of my friends to roses. But I haven’t taken time to dwell on that lately. So I’m taking time today to think and to put down an outline of how this catoregizing works. (I believe I’ll illustrate this tomorrow on the website with pictures of roses).

Roses come in hundreds of varieties. I’m sure I’ve only seen a few. But they do fall into types, don’ t they?

There are some that have vivid colours that grab your attention and hold it. Others are so soft and sheer and etheral-looking that you have to look very closely to make out the petals. There are the tightly wrapped rosebuds which cannot be opened until God does that from within. Other roses are super relaxed and spread out their petals wide, welcoming both the sun and the rain.

The lowly prairie rose, growing wild in our ditches in the summer, has only five pink petals, and sometimes has lost a few of those. In the private arbours of the wealthy can be those more special roses that have nearly 100 petals.

When I pick a rose to compare a friend to, I guess I use an inner colour code and take into account whether the personality is loose and relaxed, or more tightly withdrawn and self-contained, private. But we should work with some examples, so you can see what I mean. Thing is, if I use real personal friends I might offend some, so I believe I’ll use characters from my novel, Ruthe’s Secret Roses, to illustrate.

The first friends Ruthe makes in the book, are the O’Brien teens, Muriel and her older sister Cathy. They strike me as yellow roses, because I believe yellow stands for faithfulness and loyalty. These girls become very loyal to Ruthe. Muriel, a little more in the background, more reserved, so she’d be a pale yellow rosebud. Cathy is more flamboyant and outgoing, even blunt at times, but super loyal to Ruthe. She’d be a more brilliant, full-bloomed golden-yellow rose.

Next Ruthe rescues a girl from a strangler, and they become good friends and start a dress design shop. The girl changes her name and becomes Darlin’ Bonne. She is a passionate person. She looks up to Ruthe, but is a strong leader in her own right, and as other girls come join the shop, she is able to manage fairly well. So Ruthe thinks of her as a very hot pink rose, quite open petaled, but not full-grown yet.

She meets June at work in the telephone office, and has her pegged as a perfect, sheer white rose with some dew drops on it. June is a perfectionist, but quiet and withdrawn most of the time.

Ruthe’s little sister Sharri, would probably be a prairie rose - for her simplicity and openness to anything and everything that enters her life. She grows into a more complicated rose later on.

Through Cathy O’Brien, and her boyfriend, Ruthe meets three young fellows. Now these are harder to categorize. Lloyd would probably be a vibrant golden yellow, much like Cathy, but Graham would be lighter, much paler, and Gordon… well, he’s such an exception to most rules that I think he has to be compared that that very rare, unique blue roses. A small tight bud at that.

Granny O’Brien, who has stayed in her bed for years, positioned so she can spy on her son and his family… well, she’s a large red rose and dripping with passionate emotion! Tremendously generous too, although you can’t tell at first.

The staid, old-maid teacher that comes after Darlin’ Bonne to give her a piece of her mind, and try to shame her into coming back into school has a wonderful transformation that night at the shop. She becomes a totally new person with different interests and a methodical campaign to change her school and her world. Her mousy, greying red hair in a bun is turned into a short, fabulous hairdo with flaming reds and gold highlights. Phyllis Shulton is definitely a talisman rose in my books! That’s the stunning rose with both golden-orange petals and graduated pink edges.

The shy Laura and her tiny, midget daughter Lois strike me as miniature roses, with rather sheer, hardly there mauve petals. Laura would be a tight and tense bud rose, while Lois grows more open and out-going all the time.

Now Lisa, with her colourful past, but her wonderful growing sensitivity and maturity after she’s met Ruthe - she’s harder to assign a category or type to. Maybe I’ll call her a classic tea rose. No, a large, full-bloomed moss-rose like we used to see on old English calendar art, that might define her better for the later part of the novel.

Her friend Emeraude, or Emie for short, - hmm… again, very hard to decide. When I close my eyes to imagine her though, what comes to mind is a large white rose, losing petals, and having a strange hint of green in the white. Very unusual!

Ruthe herself? Ah, there too, I’m betwixt and between. Sometimes she strikes me as a small, though not miniature sheer pink rose, with petals that are almost not there, and a bud that is opening up. That represents her inner private life. To the public however, she presents as a fairly hot pink rose, again, not a tight bud, but not fully opened up either yet.

The wonderful thing about roses, as with people, is that they are living entities. Living beings are subject to change, and as Jesus said, our lives are like grass, or flowers of the field, here today, but can also suddenly be cut off and gone. Our lives are frail, temporary beauties. We must respect and value one another the way the Lord God does.

Fortunately, this life is not our last one. Our temporary fragile beauty here can be transformed into something far more glorious and amazing in Heaven - IF we choose Jesus here. If we reject Him here - we will live forever too, but in that place of eternal torment. Please, I beg you, choose Jesus today!

To read sample chapters of my first book online, start at The Index

To order the e-book to download and read on your computer; Order page
(or if you email me, we can make a deal and I’ll send it to you on CD).

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