Loving Life – Even When it Involves Turning Lemons into Lemonade

Do you feel like “Life” has been giving you a few lemons lately?

** This is a repost from Oct 2017 – before I had issues with my first site and before I met Sara of Moonsteam Designs — I started to TRASH IT — but felt like someone needed the encouragement…if that’s you, then you know who you are…I pray it encourages you in some small way!
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Happy Monday, Hopefully, you are enjoying some of this “bee-u-tee-full” fall weather.

Here in the south, this may be our only day of fall.

According to the forecast, we are going straight from summer to winter.

We just got back from vacation and I guess you can surmise from the title it wasn’t ‘exactly’ the vacation I had in mind.

We ended up coming home 3 days early due to car problems and because it’s been a while since Hubby and I have been able to take a ‘week-long’ vacation for ‘just the 2 of us’ it would have been easy for me to get really ‘bummed out’….which, to be completely honest would ‘definitely’ have been my response a few years ago.

Thankfully with age comes wisdom and because I made the choice a few years back to focus on the positive and not the negative I was immediately able to see things from a brighter perspective.

I can’t say I was excited to have it end early…but I can say I was able to re-group quicker than I would have in the past.

As I looked at the situation I could “see” SO many things to be thankful for:

a) Just the week before we had made the decision to go to Mobile AL rather that Waco TX. (it was stressful enough driving home from Mobile in a car you thought might stop on you any minute)

b) The first sign that we had a problem happened on Sunday…just ONE day into our vacation, but we were able to ‘fix’ it ourselves and continued on without any more issues until Thursday…(we could have missed the entire week, not just 3 days)

c) The second time we had issues they were a little more serious than the first AND we ended up sitting in the grass on the side of I-10 (trust me …this was Not fun) we Google’d to see where the nearest Honda dealership was and found out the ONLY Honda dealership on this side of the Gulf was 5 minutes away at the next exit.

c) From the Honda dealership we were within walking distance of both hotels and restaurants – thankfully we didn’t have to walk…but we could have if we needed to.

d) The dealership was able to fix the car ‘enough’ that we could get safely home without having to be stranded in a hotel for 3 or 4 days with no transportation. (it happened on Thursday…so potentially if it was something that required them to order parts, we could have also been stranded over the weekend as we waited for them)

f) We called on the way home and found out the repair shop we use had ONE opening for Friday (if) we could get the car there by 8 am.

I could go on, but just want you to know… God took care of us…EVERY step of the way.

You see, Bad Things happen (to everybody) there are NO exceptions…but often they’re made worse because of our attitude.

Why am sharing this with you? Because I “felt” like someone needed to hear this message ___ It’s going to be OK __ You’re going to be OK!!

I know some of you are going through things that could NEVER be compared to our vacation problems and PLEASE don’t think I am in any way trying to make a comparison… but I know someone reading this needs to hear this message:

*** It doesn’t matter what you’re facing – God Cares and He is interested in you and your problems.

Sometimes we have to reach out to someone in order to see the “good” in our particular situation…but if you look, long enough and hard enough – You Can Find It!

If you feel like no one who cares …Reach out to me … I’m here to listen and to be your friend.

Until next time 🙂

p.s – Don’t want to leave you hanging….guess you’re wondering how we turned our situation into lemonade?

*We just decided to turn the days we had left into a ‘staycation’ at home. We choose not to let anyone know we were home, so there were no phone calls.

We ate out so I didn’t have to cook and we visited two local parks where we hiked through the woods just enjoying each other’s company and the beautiful weather.

It was AWESOME…AND…we got to sleep in our own bed at night.

We loved it so much that we’ve decided we may have a ‘staycation’ 2 or 3 times a year.

*** Update: we have already had 3 staycashion’s this year in spite of the fact that it’s been one of the busiest work season’s I’ve had in years. It’s NOT always about spending money – it’s spending QUALITY time with those you love.