Wind Canyon Writing

The other night we were walking through the home we recently purchased and will finally be able to move into in a few days, provided our new upstairs carpeting and kitchen floor get installed on time – crossing our fingers! Anyway, my father-in-law said, “It’s amazing how you can put nice carpeting and paint in a room and then completely ruin the affect with bad lighting.”

He was commenting on the downstairs family room. It was the first time we were seeing it at night, without the natural sunlight coming in. He was right. The lighting was horrible and something we will change right away.

It also made me think how the same thing is true of us. We can do our best to look pretty on the outside, but if the light coming from within us is dull and cold, it will dress-down everything else about us. And, if we remain that way for too long, we’ll find ourselves in a very lonely and depressing place.

So many things affect our inner light: too much stress, not enough sleep, bad habits, too much change at one time, a house closing that took much longer than expected, your perfectly healthy 18-month-old being rejected for health insurance and having to wait for a letter of explanation through snail mail before you can do anything about it…but, enough about me. The point is, the list goes on and on. Really though, it comes down to attitude. How many times have you heard the saying, “Life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it.”

Crisis moments will always arise and some days it will feel like a “kick me” sign is permanently attached to your back. Those moments and days are out of our control, but our attitude isn’t.

I confess that I’ve allowed my inner light to become dim more often than I’d like lately. Let’s just say, life has been unsettled for awhile now and fatigue is setting in. Still, it’s no excuse, because everyone can agree that poor lighting only makes things worse.

It’s funny how something so unrelated, such as my father-in-law’s comment, can bring things back in to perspective. That moment made me realize that I need to stay focused on all the things that are going right, and return to an attitude of gratitude as fast as possible whenever I start losing the right light.

We’ve all been there, that point of mental and physical exhaustion, when we just have to let go and succumb to the teeter totter of emotions we’ve been riding. I reached my tipping point with 120 miles left in a 700 mile move from Omaha, Nebraska to Hazen, North Dakota. With my husband somewhere ahead [...]

Recently a good friend asked me why I quit writing on this blog. I didn’t have a good reason other than to blame it on having a second child and how that addition had made life busier than expected. Let’s face it, life is always going to be busy and that excuse is tired and [...]

I can’t believe how long it’s been since I’ve written. Life flies by and is full of changes. Our new baby girl is almost four months old. She cut me some slack by being born almost two weeks early during a very hot, humid and uncomfortable summer. After a “slam dunk” birth, as one nurse [...]

Two cars collided today at the intersection of 168th and Pacific. There was a brief moment before the accident when best case scenarios and worst case scenarios flashed through the mind of the silver Honda Odyssey’s driver. When it became painfully obvious that the best case scenario was eliminated and impact was unavoidable, the question [...]

I looked out across the grassy flatland of the Little Missouri River Valley that we would soon be riding across and felt a sense of excitement. I also had a case of nerves as I looked at the steep decline we would have to ride our horses down to get to the valley. Camping out [...]

We were visiting my brother over the Christmas holiday a few months ago and my sister-in-law and I went out to grab a couple of movies. My husband suggested we get “District 9” if it was available. He had gone to see it when he was in Kansas City for business and said it was [...]

During the first couple of years of marriage, my husband and I kind of had a “now” philosophy when it came to budgeting and financial planning. Sure, we invested some money in retirement plans, but for the most part we were only concerned with what we could afford today without giving too much thought about [...]

Move over Sydney Bristow, Jack Bauer has come to my town. After being told by countless friends how awesome and addictive the show “24” is, my husband and I finally decided to check it out for ourselves last Friday night. We were both wondering how it could ever live up to our expectations, considering how [...]

How do you know when you have a good dog? When you forget you let her outside and leave home; leaving her to wander where she wants for a good six hours, but she still doesn’t seem to stray far from your unfenced yard. That’s what happened to our trusty, old chocolate lab, Macy, on [...]