When the Idle Moments Get Us

First and foremost, thank you all for your sweet words and wishes for Stella on Friday. I took her to the vet and she will need to be taken to the cardiologist for an echo cardiogram soon. She has had a heart murmur since I adopted her two years ago and we need to find out more about it. We will know more soon, but for now, I'm just praying that little Stella girl will be a-okay and that the heart murmur won't lead to anything else.

I ended up feeling under the weather myself this weekend. I hate feeling less than 100% because it physically limits me to what I can do. I wanted to get out for a run this weekend and that didn't happen. I also had a lot of "idle" time. Lying in bed, my mind would wander. To places I don't like for it to go. Thinking about the people who've hurt me. And for a good hour or so yesterday, I felt really low.

Not a good feeling, right? You start questioning why? How? What if things happened differently? [This is where I should refer back to my bullet point last week on how "life's too short to worry about the what ifs"] But still... it hurts to look back at the people who've bruised you - even if the bruise was only temporary.

Then I realized there are just those circumstances that happen to us in life. And all we can do is react. We can't change what happened or what is happening. We just have to focus on the now because tomorrow is not guaranteed. I learned this in huge life events like the loss of my mom. However, it's in those less life-altering moments that I tend to get stuck. You know - when I'm thinking about friends who weren't there when I needed them, people who were dishonest, the guys who left me with a broken heart, even the situations going on day-to-day that I can't see the end result of.

In those idle moments, re-focus your thoughts. Think about what you can be doing, what strides you can be taking, how life really is still so good.

I took those lyrics from my current favorite song, "The Lime Tree" by Trevor Hall. Whatever those negative thoughts are that creep into your mind during the idle moments, wash them down. Be renewed everyday. And toast to the people and the things that do matter right now in this moment. And remember, the stars... well...

They still shine.