Perspective

For some time now, I have been talking to my daughters about a blog I started reading last year. I went there in a search for something - vegetarian pizza or something like that - and I was intrigued by her photography first and recipes and then read a few of her entries. It wasn't long before I had gone back to her first entry and read it straight through like a novel. I'm not sure what kept my interest. We certainly have nothing in common except love for our families. In fact, she exhausted me with her energy and love of life and made me wistful that I had not been able to call up that energy and excitement when our children were little. I loved her sense of humor if not her clothing style and her propensity to take pictures of herself - that's SO me. Anyway I think that original blog is up somewhere. I'll look for it later, but in August of last year, she and her husband were in a plane crash that killed the instructor. Christian was badly injured and burned but recovered enough to go home in a matter of months. Stephanie, however, had burns over 80% of her body, and it was doubtful for awhile that she would even live. I checked on her progress through her sister Courtney's blog, who kept the children, and amazingly she not only lived but progessed through many, many skin grafts and who knows what else and now is home. Since all my old web sites were wiped out when my computer crashed, I did a search yesterday, and this is what I found: http://www.nieniedialogues.blogspot.com/

This is where the perspective comes in. I got up this morning when the alarm beeped and groggily put my feet on the floor. I felt stiff and blah and not at all anxious to get up and do my animal feedings before starting to work. Then I remembered having read Stephanie's 15 steps to get up (not pretty) and could not believe my attitude. So I took a couple of her steps - I believe #6 and #13 - and used them: Cry/pray. Then I was able to go with a lighter step to my mundane duties. She has a long road ahead of her, but she has a large strong family. However, the extraordinary thing is how many web followers she has. Her family was on Good Morning America, and it was mentioned how the internet has formed whole communities, and people had never met Stephanie but read her blogs - thousands and thousands, it seems - who prayed, had fund-raisers, sent encouragement to the families, and gave money to a complete stranger - but yet not a stranger.

I do spend more time than I need to on the computer, but it's not a complete waste of time when you can gain something that will make your life better. Now a lot of it WON'T make your life better, and there are quite a few "favorites" that I chose not to put on my new computer.

The weather looks not quite as bleak as it did yesterday. I took the garbage and recycling out yesterday, forgetting it was a holiday. Nothing like a bright orange bag on a holiday (or the wrong day) to advertise your scatter-brained-ness).