Good Morning my loves! Happy Monday to you all! I hope all were able to celebrate Mother's Day in a way that made it special to them, if you did it with out commercialism Anna Jarvis would be proud of you. Oh you don't know who she is? Take a minute and google.... you will be utterly surprised what Mother's Day was and what it now shouldn't be.
My day was spent working in the yard, I dug up and replanted a bush that I truly did not like. Pampas Grass... which had literally taken up 3/4 the deck on one side. I absolutely despised the way it feels.. it is sharp and grabs at your skin. Ed said on Saturday I could dig it up... I was shocked! I hadn't said I wanted to, only that I disliked it. Immediately I felt bad for the plant, I mean it didn't do anything wrong it was just there Pampasing along and I wanted to chop it down! So I ended up chopping this one plant into 5 parts (yes it was that big) and replanted 2 parts in our yard in a better location and gave away 3 parts. I all of a sudden liked the bush, and I am hopeful they will regrow and thrive as I think they will look good. I am hopeful they will preserver through my what was likely an incorrect removal. I then worked on the area re-purposing it for more of my little garden. None of this however would have been possible if I had not stood my ground on Saturday.
This all started with a oil drum. We had this big huge ginormous eye sore of a thing (sorry i didn't take pics maybe Ed did and he can comment below with them) that was kinda on the side of the house and it really wasn't something anyone actually LOOKED at but it was right where we are putting our outside shower so it had to go. Now me personally I could have done without a replacement because hello we have HVAC why do we NEED kerosene heaters that don't even work if the power goes out, but alas I lost the argument. I am at least hopeful we are going to do away with the big one! So here we are taking out this ugly thing and when he pulls around with the "new" tank I finally really see it. The thing is AWFUL! It is HUGE!! 80 freaking gallons and the most he buys at a time is 15 gallons and he wants to put it UNDER MY BEDROOM WINDOW IN THE BACK YARD! Do you know how hard I have worked on that back yard?? He and Dad are arguing that I can paint it.. it won't be that bad.. we HAVE to have a tank.. and I am all NO! ABSOLUTELY NOT! I refused to budge an inch. There were ideas of we can take it off of the ugly rails, which is akin to putting a dress on a gorilla and calling it a super model. No.. just no. We can lower it a little bit and maybe you wont' see it.. NO!!!! I SAID NO! I mean NO! I ended up getting so frustrated over this thing that my voice cracked and I knew I was going to cry. I finally said DO WHAT EVER YOU WANT BUT I HATE IT IT'S AWFUL! Which is the universal code of, if you do this it is not going to be pretty. All of a sudden, Ed says.. wait a minute.. has dad whip out his handy dandy tape measure (he keeps one in his pocket) and all of a sudden there is a new place for this oil drum tucked between an azalea and the HVAC unit that NO ONE CAN SEE unless you are literally looking for it! It serves it's purpose yet it isn't sitting there in the back yard for everyone to see. But what if I had not stood my ground, or spoke up, what if I didn't have the confidence or will to say NO! What if I had not persevered even though I had two men who could have easy told me to sit down and be quiet standing in front of me. Here we are at the end of this with a solution that all are happy with. The plan came together.
Persevering is hard. Seriously. Here you are KNOWING what you want and all of these things are in your way. Take for instance my haunted rose, I call her that because of the ghost story of Church Hill in Gloucester, at some point the story was retold with flowers growing up through the porch at the location of Elizabeth's death and it stuck with me. So years ago when I found that a rose was growing up through our little front porch it just touched my heart and I loved it. Until last year we came home from some outing to find that someone or something had chopped her right to the porch plants and tossed her to the side. I was so sad, what would do that? Who would do that? And WHY? It took a bit but we finally reduced this list of suspects to... my mother. Sure enough, she accidentally clipped off my haunted rose thinking she was a weed or unwanted, and sadly it wasn't the correct time of year for that sort of thing so I thought my beauty was gone. Until this spring that is, I noticed Elizabeth's beauty was springing up through those planks again, and will you just look at her? What has been one or two blooms previously have multiplied and become much more beautiful! She persevered through being chopped down, the unlikeliness of growing in the darkness under a porch, a cold snap a few weeks ago no one was expecting, she pushed her dreams right on through and bloomed! Her plan came together.
What if we think about our own dreams and goals. How easy would it have been for me to say yesterday "It's Mother's Day I am going to eat whatever I want!" because I was invited to a wonderful family get together. There were so many wonderful things, and I could have so easily just dove right in head first. Yet I made my choices wisely and with concern for my goals and dreams. I did eat a bite of my mom's macaroni salad and a bite of her homemade cake, but it was simply that, a bite. I didn't need anymore to enjoy the taste for only a moment was enough, because my goals are bigger than 3 servings of macaroni. I even had some of the most delicious chickpea salad and just didn't eat the chickpeas, or the craisins from the broccoli salad. Was any of that easy? No, not particularly but I stood my ground and did what I needed to for me. How easy would it be for me to not workout today, because frankly my body is SORE from this weekend. I could simply say screw it, I did enough already the last two days, but those things are not going to get me to that October Half Marathon, I need to push through and work on my goals.
It's simple, our dreams aren't easy to reach, if they were they wouldn't be dreams or goals and everyone would be doing it all already. In order to reach the hard stuff, we have to be strong and persevere in the face of our porch planks and oil drums! Be bigger than your biggest excuse, be more powerful than the barrier that is in your way! Take your time, stand your ground, live your dream, succeed!
Signing off today with this, where in your life have you persevered where it would have been just easier to give in? Are there places you can take a firmer stance now to get you to your goals?
Peace Love and Light
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