What a deep blessing to come back in and find messages saying I was missed. You have touched my heart with your kindness, especially as my week was one of feeling rather isolated and stuck. As usual, you all here are balm to the soul!

Today is acupuncture, and I am hopeful that the rest of this emotional sludge that has passed for my blood this past week will be ushered out. On an emotional level, I have felt a bit like a spinning top in a circle full of cats! One pat, and I felt myself go zinging in another direction.

We fared fine in the storms, though both the dog and I seem to have been a bit more affected by that “tornadic thunderstorm” we were caught in last November. I have always loved storms, but now the intense wind made me duck a bit, and he, too, was more sensitive to the winds. The other dogs and cat who were home then and not in the truck with us during that November storm snoozed as usual. ????

I was rather hoping that the winds would rip enough of the roof off that insurance would pay for its replacement. We have never had a claim, but the roof went bad early due to faulty shingles. The company will not honor its warranty, we need to fix it to sell the house at a good price, and a roof is expensive!

I thought maybe that storm would help us out by making it an insurance issue, as the wind was fierce, but it took one shingle off and dropped it on the sidewalk. Just ONE. ???? That’s like saying, “I could have…but I didn’t.”

Ah, well, as PG Wodehouse said, “No doubt these things are sent to make us more spiritual!”

Today will be another bonus day here in the Midwest, near 60 and sunny! This is much closer to the weather for this time of year where I spent most if my life, so it feels more “right” to me somehow.

And, oh, the blessing of more daylight! The chickens are laying again, so breakfast this morning was courtesy of one of our eleven hens and whatever bugs she found waking up under last fall’s leaves. They love to free range. Sometimes they fibd so many yummies that they shun their chicken kibble!

Although the picture does not match today’s weather, I wanted to show you the view from the shore side park where we often take our lunch on Fridays. I thought of you all and took a few pictures, despite the grayness of the day.

I was super excited this past Friday to find that the ice had broken its hold on the Lake at long last, and I could once again watch the light dance on moving water. Just the week before, it had still been a seemingly immovable sheet of ice.

Isn’t that how things often go in our lives? When we face a challenge over a span of time, it can seem as if nothing has changed or will ever change. We get frustrated by the same sight, day after day, the same unbudging vista.

Then…somehow…a little warmth we may not even notice…a little sunshine…and in what seems an all-of-a-sudden moment, things are moving and dancing again.

Lovely. That one needs to be in the website poetry area when we get it all organized.

You might like the work of an artist named Rich Mullins. He was a bit of a mystic, and his words often touched my heart. He wrote phrases like, “I can’t see how You’re leading me, unless You’ve led me here, to where I’m lost enough to let myself be led,” and “I’d rather fight you for something I don’t really want than take what You give that I need.”

I think my favorite album of his was his last, recorded on a boom bix player in an empty chapel with just him and a piano, vety shortly before he died.

AWESOME, Diane! For you to leave because something bothered you, then return and NOT try to smooth over the ruffled feathers of the perpetrators is HUGE.

You not only allowed yourself to have your emotions, you gave them the gift of having to deal with their own emotions, too!

When someone does something inappropriate and we react by trying to smooth over our reaction to their actions as if we were to blame for upsetting them, we rob them of a growth opportunity. If we take their emotions for them, no one grows, including us.

If they felt bad because a cruel action was seen for what it was, then this was a good thing. If we cover it up by being super nice and friendly (and I have done this same thing more often than I can count!) then we allow the cruelty to continue by slapping an emotional BandAid over it.

We need not say a word for this energy shift to happen. We only need to be true to ourselves, accept our own feelings, and not try to fix what isn’t ours in the first place.

Good for you!

Amen. I have always thought nationalistic pride/fervor a type of arrogance we cannot afford to indulge. To be proud of who you are as a country, heritage, history, or a person is one thing, not wrong in itself, but to be proud of it at the expense of another is something else entirely!

Lately, I find myself reading the latest example of arrogance and wanting to issue a formal apology to all the other countries who are being offended regularly by this regime. Oh, how I hope they realize we don’t all think like that!!