When my best friend and sister-in-law Lynn comes down for her snowbird stint in Florida each winter she works long and hard on cleaning up our landscaping.
The first year we moved into the house it was a huge job. This year it was more cleaning up and trimming from the damage caused by the hurricane. But maintaining what she’s done and weeding year round is my job. I try to keep up so I don’t disappoint her and embarrass myself, but it’s not my thing.
After she left in January I went out and started weeding the worst of the edging around what used to be the pool cage. On the third day of the weeding project (I only do this for about a half hour a day) Randy came out, looked at what I considered great progress and exclaimed, “What are you doing taking out all the groundcover!? I thought you were going to leave the groundcover!”
Color me shocked. First of all, I don’t recall ever having any such conversation about that part of the landscaping being groundcover. Isn’t groundcover something you deliberately plant? I don’t see how anyone can see those weeds as groundcover.
But that just goes to show ya, as they say.
It reminds me of how differently people can look at or hear the exact same thing and come away with completely different conclusions about the experience. That leads to contemplation about how different people look at things with a glass half full, or a glass half empty. And that reminds me how strongly I believe that though you can’t control what happens in life, you can certainly control how you react or respond to what happens.
Last week was a bit overwhelming here in our household. We paid a roofing company a down payment and still have no date for the roof replacement. Apparently permits are taking a long time in the wake of the hurricane damage. And speaking of hurricane damage, we got a company in here to assess the water damage and its consequences in the master bedroom area of our house. There is a lot more damage than we originally thought, and the room is now down to concrete exterior walls and bare interior studs on the whole north end of the house. Drywallers are telling us they’re scheduling into July and August to put it all back together again. Lastly, I had a suspicious mammogram earlier in January and the doctor called to give me the news last week that it appears to be early cancer.
I guess I have reason to feel pretty stressed. But I’m don’t. My friend Tina gave me a glass block filled with tiny lights on which she’d put the words…. Too Blessed to be Stressed. She knows me well. There are too many things that are right in our lives, and that I have to be thankful for. I simply refuse to stress about a few bumps in the road.
One of the major advantages of having lived nearly 69 years is learning that time heals everything, that none of us get out of here alive, and that stressing about an issue helps in no way, shape or form. So, when stuff happens, I take a deep breath and get to work figuring out the best way to navigate or survive the storm.
Call me Pollyanna, but I’m all for finding the silver lining in every cloud. I’m for laying my problems at the feet of Jesus (and leaving them there), and for striving for the light at the end of the tunnel. My favorite movie of all time is called American Dreamer. I’ve probably seen it at least 17 times. In it, there’s a great line (and quote from Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche): That which does not kill us makes us stronger. It’s true.
As I’m ready to wrap up this post, I understand how Randy could see groundcover where I definitely see weeds. Neither one of us has to be right or wrong, but we have to agree to deal with the situation in a way that works best for us. Since weed control like that is my responsibility, I’m choosing to deal with them as weeds. Pull them out and do the best job I can to prevent them from coming up again.
The bright side is a great place to be on every issue. And whenever it makes sense, that’s the side I’m going to choose to be on.
P.S. That cancer I mentioned has given me a kick in the butt to get back to an intermittent fasting routine. Not only will fasting be great for how I look and feel, there’s a lot of good, emerging research that says some cancer cells can be starved to death through fasting. That’s what I’m going to do. If there really are rogue cells the medical professional calls cancer living in my breast, they don’t stand a chance against my determination to eradicate them!
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