Tangled up in Blue

   Morning walk brought to you by a very tangled barbed wire fence!

Tangled up in Blue,
Beauty or a beast?
Attempts to protect what is on the other side,
Safety from within or without?
Holding together with any means necessary,
Reflecting chaos that binds
discomfort & fear, to beauty & wellbeing.
Holding it all together with woven barbs
Lovely to look at, but impossible to grasp.

I love old barbed wire fences with their character and intention. Somehow they reflect feelings of beautiful brokenness and pain within. These fences mirror one’s internal struggle to protect vulnerable feelings through barbs that deflect approaching threats. Spiney Cholla and barbed wire are perfect companions with similar methods to defend and guard from intruders.
What can we learn from this?
Our internal barbs push away trespassers of our comfort zone within. We meet very ‘prickly’ people and have a bad impression of this type of response, but in actuality, they are in protection mode and require grace and understanding. Pain and hurt lie at the core of their discomfort and this is the mechanism to stay safe. I do that, you do that, cactus, bees and barb wire do this.
The lesson is to respect and acknowledge those barbs as a beautiful protection of our vulnerabilities and go forward with compassion and forgiveness.