We arrived home Saturday night, late.  Then Sunday we drove our Grand-Anna back to her parents after having her spend the last week with us in Washington DC.



Brochures scatter the couch waiting for me to begin a scrapbook of our adventure with her.  Pictures in the camera, physical memories of our adventure, are waiting to be processed and placed in the scrapbook as well.

Piles of laundry are tangling my every step, I try to reorganize our lives by cleaning and tucking away each item in its proper place.

There are remnants of chips all over the floors, along with grass tracked in from the yard.  Evidence of an unauthorized “just-a-few-friends” get-together; and the evidence indicates more than just a few!  Now cleaning all that up is on my to-do list as well.

Grass growing as tall as my lower calf, wild and straggly, looking as if it is having an unauthorized party as well; and the lawnmower went into the shop right before I left two weeks ago…and is still there.

I’m ready to scream!

“It is just stuff,” I remind myself,  “it is not heaven or hell.  It is just little stuff.”

Then the weed-eater doesn’t crank and I’m ready to send it straight to the devil, don’t pass go and don’t collect two-hundred dollars!

Doc hears my frustrations and before leaving for work he checks the weed-eater for me. Of course it cranks the first time for him!

Little mice nibbling away at my happy, roughing up my smooth, calm interior.  It’s an infestation of little nibbles.  All I can see are the little nibbles.

Pausing, I hear the hawk in the woods calling out.  More than likely she has caught a mouse in the field and is cheering her own victory.  Such a little thing, but it feeds her and the little ones in her nest.

I’m running around crazy wanting to scream at the little things and she cries out over the little things using them to make her life stronger.

How do I turn this frustration into joyful fruition?

Perhaps it is remembering that I am so very blessed to have enough clothes to need to do laundry; that I have a home that needs tending to and children that need discipline and vacations that train the young mind to see beyond our city limits, that brings the joy and eventually fruition of the to-do list for today.

Pausing, I begin count it all joy.

I count it all blessings, and gifts, and treasures.

“ Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance.”  James 1:2-3

Chara, joy. “Thou does make him joyful with gladness in Thy presence.” Ps 21:6

It’s in the little things that we can find joy.  But to seek it is the secret;  To invite the joy into the job.

It’s when we are in His presence then the joy is there in the labor.

And now, the laundry room is Holy Ground, because He is invited in; the chips on the floor that crunch with each step – Holy Ground, because He is there in the midst.

Joy, Joy, and my burden for little things is lifted, because He is there – Joy.

Linking with Graceful, Meme Monday, The Wellspring, Multitudes on Monday, and In, On and Around Monday

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Diane W. Bailey is the founder of The Consilium – an online community of wisdom and purpose for women over 45 years of age. She is a published author. Her books include String of Pearls – From Tears to Treasure, and 30 Days To A Better Stepfamily. She creates her own line of precious metals bracelets. Diane lives in the Deep South with her husband Doc. Together they have created a stepfamily, each having two stepchildren and two birth children, and share three grandchildren, one black lab named Charlie and one long haired tabby cat named Lil Girl. Diane’s passion is to encourage women to be all God has created them to be by pressing past fear and daring to live life as an adventure. Some of her life adventures include traveling to Israel, speaking, entrepreneurship and backyard farming with Doc. She loves Gumbo, fried shrimp and seeing all sunsets across water.

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