I’m sure anyone can relate that when it rains it seems to pour over life. When one thing seems to go south the domino effect that resonates throughout your life can be overwhelming at best and crippling at worst.

Cue the past few weeks (or I guess months it all seems to blend together). With a broken garage door, AC unit going on the fritz, a trip to the ER, and an unexpected surgery hitting the calendar you could say things have been a bit over the top. Add to the fact that this past year has been a challenging year with work – going through massive growing pains. Merging two departments, losing 5 team members, adding 4 new team members that need to be trained simultaneously, and a housing market that hasn’t slowed down we’ve been hitting the ground running for what’s been a marathon rather than a sprint.

There are so many things I could expound upon regarding different frustrations; the long hours, losing time and energy for life outside of work, and the constant windfall with one more thing lurking around the corner. But as I sit outside with the sun shining down and beautiful blue sky it’s a moment to breath and find some much-needed perspective.

I have a job that didn’t put me in a position of being furloughed when so many people dealt with stress and fear about their futures with the pandemic. My bills have been paid on time and my roof is still over my head. I have the ability to split time between the office and home for work giving me more freedom then we had prior to the pandemic as these long hours can be logged at least in the comfort of sweatpants and my grumpy little cat.

With broken garage doors and screwy AC systems the reality of life is things break and they can be replaced or put back together. Their inconvenience can be countered with the ability to take care of them and fix them even if they cause irritation in the meantime. My family and friends have been healthy through this whole ordeal. Insufferable loss was felt by the passing of one of my closest friends and at times I haven’t even known how to move forward thinking of all the missed opportunities, conversations, and memories we were going to make. But through the darkness and grief I found those that stood by and where there despite the fact that there have been times and seasons through this process that I have just pulled in and shut the world out. But my circle waited, they stayed, and they persisted- some patiently and some with crowbars- and they showed me that I wasn’t alone. That some things that feel broken and can’t be fixed can still be treasured.

And then there’s the ER and all that follows. Again, was this planned? No. Was this necessarily how I wanted to use my abundance of unused vacation days? Definitely not. But it’s something that can be faced head on. It’s something tangible. A gallbladder can be removed, and life can go on. Thankfully taking the pain and constant nausea with it.  

So, does this mean I’m becoming some bright and shiny person who vomits sunshine and rainbows 24/7. Gosh I hope not. But it means that today on a gorgeous day in May things look a little less bleak as the world seems to be collapsing around me both personally and globally and I’ll take it. Turn the music up a little louder, get outside, and deal with the never-ending crap storm tomorrow. You deserve a day off.