On Perseverance

My son and I went for a 13-mile-long bike ride yesterday on this wonderful trail we have on the old railroad corridor along I-94. It was overcast, humid, with a slight breeze, but a wonderful day. (It's been raining off and on for the past week, so overcast is totally acceptable.)
As we were riding, we talked about anything and everything. I really enjoy these times with him. But I started to notice something--little explosions of green coming up through the tar on which we were riding. At first I just saw the little tar volcanoes and couldn't figure out what they were. Then I really started looking and saw little weeds coming up through them. Coming up through a thick, fat layer of tar!
Thinking about it the rest of the trip, it just got more and more incredible. A tiny little seed or root pushing its way up through a thick, man-made layer, meant to cover the earth, not protect it or help it, but just to provide me with a smooth road on which I could ride my bicycle.
Mother Nature wasn't having any of that. She lets us know in little ways that we don't know everything, we don't control the weather, and nature will always win. (Just watch the world news--volcanoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, etc.)
Sometimes it's the little things that make big changes--over time those little tiny weeds are going to destroy that tar trail. Sometimes it's a big change like a hurricane.
But it's all about perseverance!
We're in the process of creating a new website and a new membership club for Heaven and Earth Essentials. Sometimes it is so difficult to work on both of these because we end up waiting on someone else, or something doesn't go exactly the way we want it, or we find out that we just can't do it or afford it.
But I'm going to take a lesson from Mother Nature. Perseverance. Stop, think about it. If the universe is saying you can't do something one way, try it another, or think about why you wanted to do it in the first place. I think she's a pretty smart lady and I'm glad she's my friend.

Spring Cleaning

We're in the process of doing our Spring Cleaning--and I capitalize it because it is an important event this year, for two reasons: Cleaning and Simplifying. As I walk through our house, garage, property, I see so much "stuff" and it really is too much. Do we need all this to live happily? No. It's true that it all has value, mostly sentimental, but I think we place too much value on the materialistic things.

So, we're going to start cleaning and simplifying. How, you ask?

We're starting in the house, one room at a time. We're starting with my son's room, going through everything in the room. First, the clothes and toys. We donate everything he can't wear anymore and the toys he doesn't play with anymore. As we go through everything, we clean. Move the furniture and the stuff, vacuum, wipe down the woodwork. We encourage him to do as much of it as possible--it's great training for his future. It also helps him learn that when he makes a mess, he's responsible for cleaning it up.

We're going through the house like this. The garage won't be as exciting, we've been using it as a dumping ground the past couple months! I haven't been able to park my car in it in all that time and it's amazing how easily you get used to that.

We have quite a few acres as well, and have to Spring Clean the land every year at this time. Apparently the previous inhabitants for the past century or so left garbage everywhere and either Mother Nature or they would cover it up with dirt. Every Spring Mother Nature pushes it up like so many daisies. So to complete our cleaning frenzy, I'll go out with a wheelbarrow and leather gloves and collect broken shards of glass, squashed metal cans, string, and old chunks of metal that I have no idea as to what they used to be. Last year I filled about 7 wheelbarrows full of this stuff!

The process of Spring Cleaning isn't fun, but when we're done, WOW! It feels so great to look around and see the beauty of everything, instead of clutter and dust. Why did we think we needed all that stuff?