Out Of The Woodwork

You don’t know what you need until you receive it

This week has been a week of ups and downs, with the ups being more but the downs were hard hits. The week started out with the news that a doctor I work with is pregnant and this is such happy news. She and her husband are such great people and very compassionate. They are going to be fun and loving parents though their animals may not know what to do with the new little one, but they’ll learn. It went on to learning that a coworker lost her baby and had to decide whether she wants to try again later to have a family or decide that it may be too risky. What this gal needed more than just the hugs and tears she was getting from her friends and coworkers was a time to heal and a time to digest what has happened. As cliché as it sounds she needs time to heal and trust that if she and her husband want to try again that her doctors will work hard to monitor her, since they have a better idea of what went wrong this time, but it is not easy to do.

The end of the week was more about work than anything else, but you know that feeling when the you are so tired you feel it in your bones. You ignore it for the most part and put your head down and just keep working, but then something just comes out of nowhere and makes you stop and think. It was only Friday and the day was already busy before I was even awake. I had just gotten back from my walk with Jorj and my hubby and was getting ready to start my morning workout when I got a text from a friend that stopped me in my tracks and brought tears to my eyes. This gal is the type of person who speaks her mind and doesn’t beat around the bushes. She is loving and supportive and will put others before herself without question, but will drop you fast if you disrespect her or those she loves. She is a woman of integrity and someone I respect highly, so when she sent me a text to let me know that I mattered. That what I did each day meant something. She reminded me that I could rise up from any situation and that I could take the love I have from my family to move me forward. She let me know she had my back. I truly didn’t know I needed to hear these words, and somehow she knew she had to say these words to me. She had no idea that I was given bad news, she didn’t know that even though it was Friday my work week still had three more days until a set of days off. But that didn’t stop her from blessing me.

Everyday this week I came home to a warm meal and the sounds of laughter from my family. I am lucky for sure. My 18 year wedding anniversary is today and I will be at work, and that is ok. Without my knowledge my wonderful hubby tried to set up a little weekend get away. The only reason I was brought in on the plans was the fact that he was having a hard time securing an AirBnb. The fact that he had thought of this made tears burn the back of my eyes. Not that he is not thoughtful, it’s just been so busy I didn’t think we would be able to do more than just a dinner date. Luckily a friend of ours offered her family’s cabin so we could have that time for each other. Yesterday we celebrated my middle daughter’s birthday. Covid-19 prevented us from doing our normal get together with friends but we still made the day special for her by getting the free birthday drink from Dutch Bros. We moved her room around like she wanted and to top it off my eldest daughter and I spent most of the morning making a special cake for her. All the things we did were not necessarily amazing but they made her happy, they made her feel special.

I say all these things because life is always going to be hard. No one said it would be easy. That doesn’t mean we can’t think of others. A devotion I read once talked about how the things we tend to not like about other people often are the same things we don’t like about ourselves. If we work to change ourselves, and we give over to God what we can’t change then we will start to get a new perspective and sometimes the changes we made to ourselves will also change in others, especially if we are close to those people. The only thing we are in control of is ourselves and sometimes even then it takes an act of God to make a change. This doesn’t mean we can’t work at making someone else smile for a bit. We can encourage people with our words and actions. When we bless others we will get blessings in return. My very good friend reminded me that prayer journals work. Write down your prayers good or bad. Watch and you will see that you’ll start crossing those prayers off when they are answered. Come out of the woodworks and be a light for someone. The only thing that can rid the dark is light. Don’t hide your light, shine bright each day and you will find that not only are they brighter but you’ll sparkle. Until next time:

There is never a reason to worry that someone will outshine us. It’s not a competition. We all need to shine the brightest we can in our own unique way. It’s not possible for there to be to much light in this world. Shine……..and let shine