Creating a life of beauty requires this one thing.

14 years ago a young bride walked down the aisle with fresh garden cut dahlias.

11 years ago that young bride turned pregnant-with-twins-mama sprinkled dahlia seeds in the corner of a California apartment patio to grow & bloom.

Bloom they did!! The dahlia seeds grew so tall they reached up high to the cloth diapers swinging on a line in the breeze.

7 years ago, the young bride turned now-mama-to-three splurged on an impulse buy for tubers to put into the yard to grow tall and strong in the Colorado mountains.

She didn't know she needed to dig them up in the winter (some actually surivived!).

She didn't know her tubers would multiply and produce more dahlias to split and share with friends.

She simply loved them and having them in her yard made her happy.

5 years ago, the young bride turned mama-turning-into-pilot's-wife left her dahlias behind to bless a new family and chase her husband's dream with him

2 years ago the bride-mama-pilot's wife bought a book that came with a packet of dahlia seeds.

With no garden of her own yet, she planted her seeds in a shared space and watched as they bloomed that year.

So many lessons and failures have happened in between the 14 years for this bride turned mama turned pilot's wife.

Oh but the victories, the joys and the hard-fought triumphs when I have succeeded in gardening come with the extra smile knowing how hard gardening can be at times.

Things of beauty take time.

Any great work of art required two things of the artist - patience and time.

You can not simply be patient and not sit down at the easel.

Nor can you sit at the easel but rush the piece in front of you.

Creating anything of beauty takes time, especially when the thing you're creating is a life of beauty.

When you sit and give your craft the time it requires you won't see it with your eyes but what happens is little pieces of yourself, like glittery specks float between you and the art you are creating.

You put a bit of yourself into what you create.

It takes time.

Are we willing to give our lives, our art, the time it needs to become a thing of beauty?

What is the art you're wanting to create?

Is it in the hearts of your children? Or perhaps with a paintbrush? Maybe you are creating art in friendships and community.

Wherever God is leading you to create art - be fully present, sit at your "easel" and then put in the time.

Give your life's art time.

I shouldn't be surprised that dahlias remain my favorite flowers - they can be finicky and tricky at times but then reward the patient Gardener ten-fold when there are successes!

This year I experienced a success.

I divided my first crop of dahlias, stored them over the winter, and have started waking them up in my makeshift grow room in the basement.

I don't think I've ever been more proud of myself than I was when I pre-sprouted my first tuber and took my first (2) cuttings!

If we don't begin today, we will never get to where we could be in one, five or ten years.

So take the time today to give your art the time it needs.

Comment below, what you are giving time to today?