trees and white blossoms

so today i learned something new. :) i was walking around outside enjoying the Beautiful weather! and then i saw this tree with pretty white blossoms hanging over the fence right toward me. i thought the flowers would look pretty in my hair so i decided to break a few off. i kept walking and i was reading a new book at the same time (side note--this is really an incredible book. it is called "gift of the sea" and it is written by ann morrow lindberg. she has a beautiful style of writing that i love because she is able to express things in a clean, unique, and wonderful way.) 

anyway, so i was walking, still holding the little flowers and i noticed after a while that they were now really wilted. and it had only been maybe 15 or 20 minutes. by the time i made it home they were all shriveled up. it made me think about unity again (i was on this unity kick last year). i'm still learning a lot about unity, even though i'm not as focused on it, but one thing i thought of was how little time it took these flowers to become wilted once they were detached from the tree. while walking i think what happened is my hand kept swaying and moving, so maybe the wind had something to do with the wilting of the flowers, but then i thought about how the wind must surely blow the flowers while they're still attached to the tree, but it doesn't seem to have the same effect (they don't seem to get wilted that way or that fast i guess), and i felt like the reason is because of the tree's unity and what it offers to each individual flower so that it is stronger as a whole unit than in smaller/separate pieces. i feel that is a true principle that relates to so many things. 

it also made me think of something that our stake president's wife sister todd said once during a lesson. she was talking about finding balance in her life and how she used to imagine a wheel and that she would separate her life into all of these little triangles so that the wheel would be complete and roll smoothly. but then she realized her life was not a wheel, but more like a tree. she said her life was like a tree because she found balance and peace from being deeply rooted in the gospel, and that everything else extended from her testimony of christ and of knowing who she was. 

anyway, that is something i learned today. i love learning from nature and i love beautiful days!