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| Challenging myself - parasailing on the Gulf of Mexico |
Every day is a "today".
Every day has potential and possibilities which at first may be unseen.
Take last Friday for instance. Ironically, the day after I finished Monday's blog posting "Today".
It all started normally with the wake up alarm followed by the minutiae of my daily routine such as listening to the news, making the bed, getting coffee started and toast made, checking my cell phone, etc.
It actually had its beginnings three days before when I'd visited a friend "in the process of becoming.
Okay, she's fast transitioning to a friend, to pet her fur baby, knit, talk, etc.
This person has been a huge blessing to me and aid in my process of recovery since I was fired from petting kitties at the Humane Society last December for being bitten by one. This person generously offered to allow me to come into her home and pet her Shihpoo. I'm not really a canine person. More of a feline person. But her Shihpoo is fast making a convert of me. He's small. His curly hair is quite soft. He snuggles quite contentedly grateful for my attention in a busy home with two children and assorted illnesses.
On my visit, my friend had been very, very down. Life, her life, was getting to her that day in a way I'd never seen before. With people in the family on the autism spectrum, with epilepsy and other health concerns, I'd have been in the fetal position huddled under something long before this. However, this brave lady has kept soldiering on through more than four months of different illnesses, seizures, etc.
The day I visited, things got to her. I sat with her on the couch, petted the Shihpoo - and listened.
There are times when words just don't cut it.
I can't fix her life. Platitudes, homilies, what have you are not going to be helpful. In fact, they're going to be harmful.
When I left that morning, she was feeling somewhat better.
I was concerned and stayed concerned.
Which brings us to Friday. I messaged this friend to see how things were going in her house. She messaged back that she had an appointment and was trying to figure out logistics on how to get there and back. Having had the pleasure of riding our transit system, I knew that for her to get to where she was going was doable but cumbersome and time consuming. Without thinking I offered to take her to her appointment and made arrangements to pick her up in about an hour.
So far, so good.
Right?
Ummm. I conveniently forgot two details: (1) this destination was outside my comfort zone so while I'd been there before, I'd never driven there; (2) 3 cm of snow (a little over 1 inch of snow) was forecast for that morning.
What I didn't realize at the time was that all three centimetres of snow was going to come down at once.
When I made the arrangements with my friend, snow was forecast but not coming down. When I left the house snow was lightly falling - a flurry.
However, when I left my friend's house en route to our destination, the situation had drastically changed. Most of the forecast accumulation had fallen during the brief time I'd been in my friend's home.
I felt like I should be singing Slip Sliding Away as the car went various directions on its own.
So here I was in the middle of a snow storm in rush hour traffic heading to a destination I've never driven before from a location I'm not all that familiar with.
Inching my way to our destination with my friend beside me performing the duties of a human GPS, we saw a van in the ditch. I was happy it wasn't us.
We ended up in the wrong lane at a roundabout I was dreading, thus forcing me onto the wrong road. Since I was dreading this particular roundabout as it can be "interesting" to navigate on the best of days, so I simply turned left off the wrong road into a shopping area and ended up turning right onto the correct street.
No fuss. No muss. No roundabout.
Although I was unaware of it, we were almost at our destination.
Imagine my relief when I saw the destination area ahead of me.
I dropped my friend off at her location, parked the car and decided this was a good time to get my steps in for the day.
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| My "souvenir" of that trip. |
I'm not sure how to describe this particular area we were in. It's new(ish). It's huge. It's got several big box stores like a WalMart, a Lowes, my favourite camping store Adventure Guide, a PetsSmart, etc., several eateries ranging from Dairy Queen to Milestones and things in between, the medical building my friend was visiting that day and a cineplex. It's huge.
I definitely felt more comfortable walking rather than driving. I walked to the Lowes to look at their spring bulb selection. And that is where and how I found the greenhouse my hubby is putting together in the picture above. The very greenhouse I'd seen a couple of years ago in another home improvement store. The very greenhouse I didn't buy at that time because I didn't have the money then. The very greenhouse I"d been looking for since then.
Yahoo!
I was one happy camper on my way back to the medical building to pick up my friend.
After our frightening drive there, if given my druthers I would have left the car in the parking lot and either stayed there or found another way home. However, I had my friend to consider who had other plans for the day and couldn't stay in the parking lot for the rest of the day.
So, the two of us planned a different route back to her house, one I was more familiar with and, therefore, more comfortable with.
Onward and upward - or is it outward - we went. Again with my friend performing the duties of a human GPS.
What a difference an hour makes. The roads that were treacherous when we drove there were bare and navigable when we left. Our drive was actually pleasurable. Uneventful.
Yay!
It was only later, after I got home safely that I realized that I had had not just one but two major victories that day.
I had not only willingly gone outside my comfort zone - without even a second thought.
I had driven in a snow storm - again unwittingly.
Although my adventure may have begun with singing "Slip Sliding Away", it ended with a loud, lusty and knowing me slightly off-key rendition of "Victory in Jesus" accompanied by my happy dance.
*****
Each day may begin - and end - the same way. It's what you do in between that makes the difference.
Until the next time.
I wonder what adventure is coming next on my road to recovery.
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| Comfort Zones Are Only In Your Mind - Looking down on the town of Hamilton from the Niagara Escarpment |
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