It's always an adventure. . .

I've just come in from outside where I have been gazing at the last embers of my first bonfire of the season, although I did get a head start one night last week at Dan's. I like to have a fire going while I'm working in the yard so I can sit by it to wind down after the work is finished. The quiet time is restful and pensive.  I am always amazed by the free flowing thoughts that cavort in and out of my mind and how they reflect my journey.  Of course, the memory floodgates are wide open and that is always bittersweet but for the most part, what I feel is gratitude. Time was when I never could have imagined such quiet; our house and yard so still.  How glad I am that 'something' told me to cherish all that long-ago family noise even when it seemed hectic to the point of exhaustion and my patience wore thin.

Tonight, sitting by the fire, I was comparing today with last Saturday and remembering some of the thoughts I was having then. It was a similarly beautiful warm and sunny day and I was pitifully lost in some of North Carolina's rolling, rural country roads...alone, with a malfunctioning GPS and a phone that was about to lose power.  No maps...just the printed directions I kept on my lap while I was driving. I was doing fine until the route numbers merged, then the one I was following divided into two directions, or so it seemed. To make a long story short, let me just say that what was to be a three hour trip took six hours because of all the back tracking I had to do!  I was so exasperated and tired that, after while, I almost lost my composure.  I knew it was time to pull over, take a deep breath and say a prayer.  With that, familiar coping mechanisms began to reveal themselves and I began to focus less on the fact that I had a problem and more on what my options were to find a solution.  The first option, of course, was attitude since that is something I could control immediately.  A positive attitude really does lighten any burden.  I thought about all the beautiful countryside I had seen so far that I might have otherwise missed.  I remembered that God doesn’t make mistakes – that we are always exactly where we are supposed to be even when we don’t think so.  I even smiled as I remembered; too, how one of my kids used to say, “Whenever we go with you, Mom, it’s always an adventure.”  I thought, “Yes, that’s it, I’m having an adventure.”   Aside from the fact that the extra legs of this journey were cutting into time with my family,  why shouldn’t I have an adventure, I wondered?  What difference did it make whether I was here or there?  If I were home, I’d be happily working in the yard but why not have an adventure instead?  I can always do yardwork.  Looking at my predicament in this way helped me relax and even chuckle at myself a little bit. 

Today, I smiled a lot as I worked happily in the yard with visions of last Saturday’s adventure now added to my journey’s memories.