hearing and seeing

/ abby hummel

I’m not wildly proud of this, but moving to the Arctic without lots of social commitments yet means the TV has been on quite a bit more than usual.

Aaron won a huge plasma television in a drawing a few years ago. He was hyperventilating when he called me with the news, and the voicemail he left me about it was so scattered that I honestly thought he had been in an accident. I was eating lunch with a friend and we stopped to pray for his safety. After planning to sell it for a few hours… we caved and kept it with no regrets, immediately surrendering the old clunker we inherited from my parents. (This was the one they bought when I was 7 and we went from a no-television house to having one so we could watch VHS tapes for educational and religious purposes. In the years since I moved out, they built a special theater room in their basement with a huge flat-screen tv and zillions of channels. Of course.)

This story gets shared because I feel like I need to apologize for having a nice TV. It seems silly to have it when we are so thrifty about most things and we would both like to say we are not “TV sort of people.” In our minds, we read books, listen to music, enjoy a drink, and speak of the Higher Things in the evenings. Aaron has insisted that we will start doing Shakespeare nights sometime. I don’t think either one of us has read a line of Shakespeare since college. With time, this glorified vision is slipping away and we’re slowly accepting our old married, frugal, suburban reality, so we were excited to see that our makeshift antenna picks up more than three broadcast stations.

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Mostly, this means when Aaron was gone for a weekend, I snuggled up on the couch and turned on my old guilty pleasure, The Bachelor, for “Sean and Catherine’s Wedding.” I really bristle against sentimentality — I had to tell Aaron being cutesy with the notes and flowers and nicknames when we were dating was just too much for me — but I loved watching this couple get ready for their wedding and share about their faith openly. I thought the ceremony was beautiful and appropriately touching until it got to the vows. I almost lost the will to live. She said being in love with him made her feel like she was overflowing with love sprinkles. I had just been reading about Dietrich Bonhoeffer and tried to imagine how he would have delivered their wedding sermon.

“It is not your love sprinkles that maintain the marriage, but from now on, the marriage that maintains your love sprinkles.” (Adapted from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s wedding sermon in Letters and Papers from Prison.)

the bachelor

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As I cannot yet get my dog to carry on a conversation, my daily company comes, primarily, from Minnesota Classical Public Radio. Public Radio is known for it’s deadpan reporting, which is fine until they get to the weather. I have a really hard time with the fact that there is no emotion detected when someone mentions we’re under windchill advisory until noon for the FIFTY-BILLIONTH TIME THIS YEAR.
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This our second Winter Olympics as a married couple, watched with enthusiasm from the comfort of our white couch. We do our part to match the athletic vigor in snacking. Yes, we plan to sit and watch all sorts of sporting events while shoveling snacks into our mouths with record speed and agility. It’s our tradition. This is also a great time to talk about what you would call any future kids, because you can try to figure out if they seem like “Gold Medal” quality names. Or maybe you decide against one because it sounds a little too “figure skate-y” or “bobsled-ish” and you’d rather evoke a curling or downhill ski slalom vibe. (We might be the only people who do this.)
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For me, the Olympics is a great combination of pride in Team USA and celebration of sportsmanship in general. A favorite Olympic moment so far? Men’s downhill mogul last night. Just watching the moguls makes my obliques hurt! Though I have never skiied downhill in any way, I have watched enough Winter Olympics to feel like I can recognize skill and excellence in some of these events. We rooted for the American while he competed, of course, but watching Alex Bilodeau (Canada) nail every aspect of his run was breathtaking.  I probably shed a tear when he told reporters he competes in honor of his brother who has Cerebral Palsy. I was happy to see him win the gold medal for the excellent skiing alone, but his words made it even sweeter to cheer him on.

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A long winter and watching the Olympics are making me really excited for the coming days when I can enjoy walking Max for the sake of moving and being outside and not just braving the wind in hopes that he might calm down for a while afterwards!

restoring souls

/ abby hummel

“The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want.
He makes me to lie down in green pastures;
He leads me beside still waters;
He restores my soul.”

For as difficult as moving and settling in a new place is, I’m starting to feel like we’re getting our systems down  Maybe just because I’ve been so frank with friends and family about some of these challenges, they are starting to seem less daunting. The life we’re building here will be different than the one in Iowa, and that’s okay. I have been seeing a new doctor and I like him. Max’s first vet appointment was yesterday. I can get to the dog park on the edge of town without using a GPS, and I even accurately navigated myself home from downtown St. Paul when my phone battery died last week. (Still no luck finding my favorite Chebe Pizza Crust. It must be out here somewhere.)

We’ve had some positive experiences with church hunting, but we had another crazy week that spurned lots of conversations about a bad sermon. We almost left 10 minutes into the service but decided to stick it out because it was so cold that we didn’t want to have to go right back to the car after we had parked so far away. The main gist of the message was that God wants you to have a full emotional tank, which you can’t have if you are stressed out, and that the 23rd Psalm gives you license to back out of anything you aren’t enjoying. You know, because God wants you to have a restored soul. I sat there thinking about what the last six months had brought us (huge family commitments all summer, losing another baby, deciding to move, selling our house, closing a business, moving to an unfamiliar town in a new state, buying a house, etc.), about some of the big things going on this month (Aaron’s commute and new job, setting up the new house, establishing a business when I don’t know anyone, no disposable income until I’m working, puppy, a little extended sickness, no friends yet, unending polar vortex, insurance/registration/licenses/paperwork, etc.), and all of unknowns in the next six months. You know what? I get a little overwhelmed just thinking about it all to write it down. But I don’t, for a minute, question that we might not be doing the right things.

And maybe the sermon came out wrong or I didn’t grasp what the guy was saying, but I think it totally missed the mark. While “stressful living” is not a competition and you shouldn’t seek it out, it is okay to be under lots of pressure. It is okay to be really stressed out. It does not necessarily mean you’re disobeying God or that you need to change something about your life. Sometimes being “stressed” happens because you are overly anxious or irresponsible… but sometimes it’s just the modern vernacular for acknowledging life is risky, which is always true even though it’s obvious at some times more than others. It hasn’t stopped feeling very risky for us in the past few months, and it will probably continue for a bit. (I took one of those online “stress tests” and determined that Aaron and I are both at a very high risk for developing all sorts of illnesses and maladies within the next year.)

“He leads me in paths of righteousness for His name’s sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil, for you are with me;
Your rod and your staff, they comfort me.
You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies;
You anoint my head with oil, my cup overflows.”

If we’re walking in obedience, and I do think we are, then this life right now and every difficulty or blessing that comes with it is our path of righteousness. Even when so much right now feels rough and pretty scary — though I certainly wouldn’t call it valley-of-the-shadow-of-death — the solution is not using pleasure to cover up difficulty. (What does Ecclesiastes say? “‘I will test you with pleasure; enjoy yourself.’ But behold, this also was vanity.”) Instead we have to take comfort in what God is doing, in his presence, in his rod and staff — you know, the things used to beat dumb sheep into getting where they need to go — and in the promises of our future feasting and home.

So, yes, it’s important to make sure we pursue restoration and enjoy life in the hustle right now. For us, this means we need to find good people to be friends with, we need our funny TV shows, and we need to delight in the ruckus that is Max. He won’t be a puppy forever – which is good and bad news, I tell you. We have both already had weekend trips to visit friends, and we’re looking forward to receiving visitors here soon, too. But those things don’t really solve the problem. Instead, stressful times just reveal how broken we are and how deeply we need restoration all the time. Stress has not created this need. When life is more settled, it’s easier to let everyday routines cover that up. Stress also doesn’t get to become the defining factor in our lives, even in seasons permeated by risk and difficulty.

“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” – Psalm 23.

Would you believe that there may actually be some green pasture-like grasses underneath all these little drops of still, frozen water outside my front door? There is goodness and mercy in all this — even if it is obscured by the fact that the snow is almost as high as the mailbox.

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pup snippets

/ abby hummel / 2 Comments

As expected, getting a new puppy right after moving has been a great way to start settling in to our new community. I take him on walks several times a day, which is great for improving his behavior and my mental health. While we’re out, we chat with the retired guys shoveling sidewalks, we meet the girls waiting for the middle-school bus who think he is “sooooooo precious!” and we explore new parts of the neighborhood. As it gets warmer and our walks get longer, this will start getting even better.

We’ve also ventured to the dog park on the edge of town, and have therefore been introduced to some of the drama of being “pet people.” There are the people who tell me it’s okay for Max to jump on them when I have just chastised him, because “he’s just a puppy.” I have seen an untrained Labrador knock over a child, which is unacceptable for a domestic animal, so please excuse me while I teach my dog to behave better than yours. Others make snide comments about how “you know what you’re getting because all Labs look the same,” and tell me they fell in love with their rescue dog just before he was going to be put down, which makes me feel like I should reassure them we worked with an ethical breeder and that strong breeding lines benefit dog owners everywhere. I usually smile and tell them their dog is wonderful even if I think it looks like, well, a real dog.

And crate training is apparently very controversial, too. Some dog owners think it’s awful and abusive to “lock your puppy up in a jail cage.” In contrast, I feel great about establishing myself as the head of the pack by teaching Max it’s a privilege to be in the house with me, and that he likes playing by himself in there anyway.  I don’t even want to know what people would say about shock collars on the little guy if it is needed when we start retriever training this spring.

Sometimes it’s a bit of a dog-owner-eat-dog-owner world out there.

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Maybe it’s because I’ve home by myself all day for a month, but I feel like I really have a sense for what Max would be saying to me if he could speak.
“No biting! That hurts me!”
-“Yep, sorry. I know that.”
“You can chew a stick or sit by my feet.”
-“I’m just licking my stick and your sock now. Licking, licking, lick/nibbling, licking, it’s more of a tooth massage than a bite anyway, licking, you don’t have to notice this bite, licking, licking with mouth on you, BITING, OK I’M JUST BITING AND I’M NOT ASHAMED.”

God must think I am such a puppy sometimes, too.

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Though Max is still naughty, and what he has gained in maturity just barely compensates for the fact that his increased size means he’s more powerful in disobedience, there are still so many wonderful moments where we all get to enjoy life in our new home. My friend Bethany reminded me that living harmoniously with animals is nature as it was truly intended. We are reclaiming a bit of Eden and proclaiming a bit of heaven, and we’ve been soaking up all these wonderful moments.

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Whoever coined that phrase about “Biting the hand that feeds you,” was most definitely thinking about raising a puppy.

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reading round-up (1.17.14)

/ abby hummel / 3 Comments

As I’ve alluded to before, it’s pretty cold. People who voluntarily move to Minnesota at Christmas are not really allowed to complain about this, so I am trying to find ways to celebrate the season. Of first importance, we celebrate that Max is pretty confidently adapting to using his doggie door, which makes the most annoying part of puppy-raising require less time out in the cold for us. Secondly, I’m really enjoying Six Classical Music Portraits of Winter from The Imaginative Conservative. Let me know if you have a favorite!

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I really appreciated 5 Tips for Loving People through the Loss of a Marriage. It makes my stomach turn when I think of how much pain I’ve watched friends experience in divorce, and when the people who should be able to love them best don’t know what to do, it seems even worse. I especially loved her points about the importance of avoiding assumptions (you do not know all the details, ever), validating a person’s experience without jumping to advice, and being a safe presence for the long grief journey.

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Looking around at this new house splattered with stuff I can’t figure out how to organize, and a non-working dishwasher, I’m grateful (and most needful) of the encouragement about keeping a clean home from Emily. I definitely recommend all four parts of her series, and hope to get to a point where they can be implemented here soon!
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I can’t decide which of these pictures I like best. The duck? The St. Bernard? The bunnies? Maybe the bunnies. Agh. So cute.
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Aaron’s birthday is next week, and I’m very excited to be substituting these wonderful Chocolate Peanut Butter cups in place of his usual request (“Buckeye Peanut Butter Balls”), because they taste the same and are so much easier to make! Also, significantly less messy. The only question is: big or small muffin cups? I could see this going both ways.
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USA Today shares their reader’s photos of extreme weather, which recently featured “my” lighthouse in Michigan. I find some comfort knowing it’s really cold there, too.

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[photo by Ted Swoboda]

Minnesota beginnings

/ abby hummel / 3 Comments

When we decided to move to Minnesota, I didn’t have a lot to go on beyond vague notions of what it might be like. My college room-mate occasionally visited Minneapolis, and she always told me how cold it was. Because she was raised in Alabama and had one of those old-fashioned ear-flap bomber hats lined with real rabbit fur for Michigan weather, I didn’t take that warning very seriously. Ahem. Instead, the biggest frustration was that living in Minnesota would require even more driving to spend time with family in Michigan. The compensating consolation was the excellent water access, which was notably absent in Iowa. We often said, “It doesn’t have much of the Great Lakes, but it has a great number of lakes.”

Other than that, while Aaron got excited about researching Cassava and I started freaking out about moving for a temporary job and feeling so behind in life, I clung to the positive associations I had with Garrison Keillor’s Prairie Home Companion (because breaking into bluegrass songs and wry comedic sketches during regular life would be a dream come true for me), and Caribou Coffee. Now I admit I actually enjoy the specialty drinks at Starbucks better, but I appreciate the idea of Caribou’s celebration of pioneering and The Wild over Starbucks’ hip affluent consumer vibe. Folk music and antlers helped me get used to this idea, you could say.

Then, on a beautiful October afternoon, I waited in a coffee shop near St. Paul (neither Caribou nor Starbucks, and not particularly noteworthy either) while Aaron interviewed with his new team, and the sun beat warm through my window. After months of praying, with the “high” of recently selling the house fueling our sense of adventure, I wasn’t really waiting for a text from Aaron telling me how it went or if he had an answer. I knew moving was right even though it didn’t line up with any of the things I had wanted for years. We were doing it.

While I sat at that little coffee shop, God may or may not have spoken to me through an American Idol song. (When we get outside of scripture, I’m not really sure how that works always… It’s safer to avoid taking a firm stance.)

Settle down, it’ll all be clear
Please pay no mind to the demons – they fill you with fear
Trouble might drag you down
When you get lost, you can always be found
Just know you’re not alone
I’m gonna make this place your home. – Philip Philips, Home

These are things I want to remember, because if I thought this story started a few weeks ago when we moved here, I’d be wildly disappointed to find I had missed my chance to cash in on the big (only) thought that comes to mind:
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(It’s so cold in Minnesota that someone beat me to the punch and already published a book about it!)

 

reading round-up (1.10.14)

/ abby hummel

As more of our friends are having children, and therefore statistically we have more friends with children who are special needs, I really liked this article about kids with disabilities. I feel like a klutz sometimes when this comes up — I can’t even figure out how to comment on this without fearing that I’m saying something wrong. I’ve enjoyed reading about how some of my friends from high school are discovering a beautiful life with their new little boy who has Apert Syndrome, and if you get technical about the meaning of names, I love that their blog title “Don’t Doubt Jack,” really means “Don’t Doubt that God is Gracious.” In a world that very often “terminates” unborn babies for the slightest disappointing ultrasound report, I’m glad to see parents celebrating the victory of their kids’ lives. It’s good.

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On a less serious note, I loved almost everything about Coffeedoxy and Heterodoxy, except their derogatory comments about eggnog lattes. Those things are almost the coffee version of the incarnation, the perfect culmination of eggnog AND espresso, and I would drink them year-round.

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With a new puppy, we also have a rediscovered passion for Dog-Shaming.

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Since I’ve, uh, had a few things going on, I forgot to link this earlier:  I guest posted for my friend Emily while she was busy having her two babies. (And learning to write shorter posts is my 2014 blogging resolution…!)

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Boston Review’s The Truth about GMO’s was a great read. The author does a great job of explaining how the technology of modern genetic engineering is actually altering less of the genetic code than cruder methods used during the past few thousand years of crop development.

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Little Max

/ abby hummel / 4 Comments

Little Max has been the most delightful (and naughty) addition to our life! We are sleeping less, getting drastically less done around the house, and housebreaking this close to the arctic circle is a bit more challenging than it may be in better weather, but the payoff of a great dog for the next decade+ is something we’ve been excited about for a long time. We’re already marveling at how big he is and learning some of his little quirks.

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Name: Max, after the poor little dog in The Grinch and a sidekick to the villain in The Great Race. (It tells a lot about Aaron’s sense of humor that he wants his dog to feel like the sidekick to two different cinematic villains.)

True cinematic alter-ego: Chewbacca from Star Wars, because he is brown, furry, makes funny noises at all times, and has more than earned the nickname “Chewie.”

New tricks: running up and down the stairs; occasionally sitting on command; whining when we do not provide a treat for spontaneous sitting.

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Likes: chewing fingers, socks, carpet, knit items, ANYTHING FLEECE, furniture, ANYTHING FORBIDDEN, pens, toggles on winter coats, paper; licking; treats; scratches; naps on laps; exploring outside for very limited periods of time; waiting for the chef to spill food while preparing meals; attempting to pit the grown-ups against each other; snooping on computer usage.

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Dislikes: chewing on toys while there are more exciting things elsewhere in the house; being unable to fit on laps and under certain pieces of furniture when it worked last week; watching Deadliest Catch (he probably thinks Duck Dynasty would be more appropriate, being a bird dog himself); getting cold paws when we go outside.

20140109-091210.jpgAnd… his snout is already longer than it was in this picture!

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(Yes, I suggested the name Dwight a few times before we got him.)

rough newness

/ abby hummel / 6 Comments

After what honestly feels like the most unsettled month of all time, we find ourselves in a new year, a new town, a new house, and we’re starting to get some of the puzzle pieces of this new life put together just enough to start re-dreaming.

We didn’t plan to move to Minnesota until what really feels like the last minute. We committed to this job less than three months ago! Aaron has a commute that will take up hours of his life (and our family time) during this season, which is just unavoidable if you are the sort of person who needs a yard and works in a big city. I don’t have any piano students yet, which means the budget is t-i-g-h-t for the foreseeable future. We don’t have friends yet, or a church – although we did visit one close to the new house and plenty of people said hello so we certainly plan to visit again. I can’t remember how to get to the grocery stores without looking it up on my phone and I can’t find one that carries my favorite brand of boxed pizza crust mix. I say all this not to complain, but to acknowledge that transitions are always rough, and this week I am feeling that roughness a lot.

We sat down on New Years Eve and talked about the year past, which we have wondered about and anticipated for our whole marriage, and I couldn’t stop talking about how I am scared to be so out of control in every bit of things. We have lost a life that was working and have to figure out the new one, which may or may not have much in common with the old one. It sounds so negative to speak of things in these terms, so I have to reframe these conversations and rename these fears. I want to think of this as entering a new life with so much beauty and goodness and wonder to uncover and receive. I want to be grateful that it isn’t going like I planned, because what I strive for is never the very best. I certainly didn’t expect all the goodness we experienced in Iowa, but it was there waiting anyway.

Because if I think of this in the way I want to, I would just write about how much I miss the park by my old house, and the high ceilings, the dishwasher that worked, the people I knew, the kids I saw every week. I would tell you how much I miss the Fareway meat counter and our church and knowing just where to go when I needed to get out for a bit. I would lament about how disappointing it is to be a longer drive away from our extended families, which means significantly fewer visits in the next few years. Instead of staying in that longing, I want to figure out how to accept the unsettled mess of today a little longer. Because even when I thought I had it made, I was never really in control and I was always flying by the seat of my pants anyway. (Nostalgia is such a liar.)

There are no serious New Years Resolutions this year. Just a few practical must-do’s, such as getting a piano studio off the ground and possibly getting a part-time job while that starts up, and then upgrading a few things done on the house. (Like I said, I really miss a working dishwasher. There are also several things offending my aesthetic sensibilities.) But I want this year to be full of receiving grace I could not have orchestrated or dreamed of myself, and I want to have a good attitude about it in the meantime. I’m going to fail at this, probably a lot, but when I’m not keeping it together, I want to fall forward. I want to fall into the newness of whatever moment God has given.

One of the beautiful, new, delightful gifts (already!) has been the arrival of this little pup, who has been hoped for many, many times in the past five years. The timing of getting a seven-week-old puppy while your moving boxes are not unpacked is probably not advisable, but we decided to take advantage of a litter with the exact parentage we wanted. It’s probably better to do this before we start to ever think about new furniture, really.

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So we are trudging through the joy (cuddles and cuteness!) and duty (chewing and housebreaking!) of having little Max, and someday when we stop sleeping in winter coats so we don’t freeze to death when we take him out in the middle of the night, I will probably have many wonderful updates about how the rest of life is coming together, too.

All his work is done in faithfulness. …The earth is full of the steadfast love of the Lord. – Psalm 33:3&4

Advent, Interrupted. (advent 2013)

/ abby hummel / 3 Comments

“Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head. – Matthew 8:20

Instead of following any of our usual traditions, this Advent kicks off an intense season of unsettling. While I am listening to Handel’s Messiah, because that’s just what you do before Christmas (also, it is less annoying than the radio), there is a decided focus on projects like this…

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…instead of usual things we might do at this time of the year. Instead of covering little boxes with ornamental paper, I’m covering big boxes with Sharpie-d words like, “KITCHEN/OFFICE/ETC/FRAGILE/HEAVY” (sometimes all on the same box… uh…) and covering oddly shaped packages with shrink wrap, which is like a giant roll of Saran Wrap. Instead of buying candycanes to stir my hot cocoa and preparing favorite traditional dishes, I’m creatively mixing random foods from the freezer into “adventurous meals” in an effort to move it empty.  I miss setting up a Christmas tree, placing a wreath on the front door, making snowflakes, hanging stockings, sitting by the fire with our special Christmas mugs. (Aaron’s is a Grinch.) I’m missing church Christmas events, special times with friends, surprise gifts for people I love, familiarity, routines, and control. Instead, I’m saying “good-bye” to much of this and will have to start all over in the new year.

It’s funny that this season is entrenched in tradition and patterns, and that those annoying radio songs focus on things that stay the same (chestnuts, mistletoe, snow and lights, etc.), because the beauty of the real story is that it isn’t about what stayed the same. The history of captivity, wandering, rigid moral and civil codes, receiving and ignoring confusing prophecies, war, tumult, siege, exile, and silence culminates in an unplanned pregnancy, a sub-par birth situation, an emergency move to Egypt, an entire town bereft of little boys. This does not speak to maintaining long-standing magical-feeling traditions. The beauty of this all is that these interrupted circumstances pointed to what was superior and everlasting, and it wasn’t customs or feelings or family gatherings – it was the faithfulness of God and the fulfillment of His promise.

“The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. …From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ … He has made him known.” – John 1

While I would rather be lighting candles, singing verses of O Come, O Come, Emmanuel, and reading Messianic prophecies over special dinners, I’m packing up my home, moving away from dear friends and students, spending weeks running around for family gatherings when I would rather be nesting into a new home, and not really doing much of my usual Christmas stuff. This is going to be an Advent with lots of practical reminders of Christ’s coming down to us — from timeless to temporary, from eternal life to a taste of death, from glory to a manger and then no place to lay his head, from the splendor of heaven to the unsettled mess of earth. (Which is more of a condescension than trying to function with the unsettled mess of my living room, though in my mind they seem pretty comparable.)

{concerning vocation} reading round-up (11.22.13)

/ abby hummel

A few links on dealing with difficult jobs to follow up with what I shared earlier this week… enjoy!
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The Gospel Coalition has written several articles I think are great here. Is Your Job Useless? tackles the idea of doing God’s work in your job, even if it doesn’t seem like purposeful or enjoyable work to you.

 Five Ways to Find Joy in a Job You Don’t Love is particularly helpful with practical suggestions for difficult situations. I love the point about looking for what aspect of God’s character is exalted in your tasks, even if they don’t seem meaningful or fulfilling to you.

How to Humanize the Workplace is a great look at healing for brokenness in messy workplaces.  This is probably most helpful or useful if you’re in management, but I would have had more productive discussions in my circumstances if I had been able to explain my perspective with the sorts of terms used in this article.

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Following up on that note, this article about investing in your work highlights some important things to think about for long-term career growth, especially that making significant sacrifices for a job where your bosses, managers, and coworkers do not make decisions that honor your dedication and position disrespects the dignity of the life and vocation God has given you.

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I actually haven’t read Tim Keller’s book Every Good Endeavor, but Aaron’s going through it with his men’s group and I have appreciated what he’s shared from it. It’s at the top of my list for Christmas vacation reading!

In Quitter, Jon Acuff tackles several practical aspects of getting from your day job to your dream job. His admonition that dreams are only worth chasing if you’re willing to chase them with all your spare time was the kick I needed to start teaching piano in the evenings, even though I was exhausted. Guess what? It ended up being not-that-exhausting… The mental and spiritual boost of working to get where I needed to go was immensely encouraging.
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Finally, a solid exhortation from Albert Einstein. (Or maybe just Pinterest. Be sure to read what Abraham Lincoln said about quotes on the internet.) My life improved dramatically when I stopped buying the lie that my challenges were the result of a bad attitude. I realized I needed to think outside the box to discern the opportunity in the difficulty.

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