The Long Run

Today is trash day and there’s a rug folded up in the trash bin that has been with me since I lived in Florida some 30 years ago. I really didn’t see that coming.

I find it highly amusing when a minor catastrophe can refine your life for the better. Last week, both dogs had diarrhea, but not at the same time. It started with Denver, but he’s a male, so he just wanted to be let outside every hour and even chose to sleep outside the first night. When Winnie girl caught it, she politely relieved herself in the middle of the night on the rug. The next morning, I tried to clean it from the rug, but it had soaked in, so I knew this rug was leaving.

I took it outside and laid it over the top of one of the fences and let it rain on the rug all week with hope that maybe that would help wash away the foul smell, but it didn’t. The dogs were so confused with this rug being outside. It’s where they ate their treats and every so often, Denver would nap on the rug. It had been a part of their everyday lives from the very beginning, but suddenly the dog area of the house was rug less.

My tastes have evolved and last year I purchased a durable runner for the back door in a neutral tone. Something that would handle dog traffic and clean up easily and I loved the look of the runner, even though it clashed with the 30-year old rug laying nearby.

I left the floor bare all week, but the dogs had no idea how to eat their treats on the hardwood floor, so I laid a towel down and that helped temporarily. My gaze fell upon my meditation area in the next room where a circular rug has laid for years. It’s made from woven jute, so it’s pretty much indestructible. I pulled it into the dog area and was pleasantly surprised to see it complimented the back door runner nicely!

When we reach a certain age we’ll realize we have everything we’ll probably ever need, so I take a long pause before making a new purchase. I had no idea I already had a rug to replace the one that was trashed, until life happened. When catastrophe strikes, give it time to run it’s course. Something good will come from it in the long run.




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15 responses to “The Long Run”

  1. I totally agree with your last sentence Barb. Glad it all worked out with the rug.

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    1. Thank you, Mags! I appreciate you. 💖

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  2. I love your header quote, Mags. I do enjoy re-purposing items around our home. Dan is currently working on building me a new plant stand out of an old pool ladder. I can’t wait for it to be done. 😀

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    1. I meant Barb! I must have been looking at Mags comments when I wrote that! 🤦‍♀️

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      1. No worries, lovely.

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    2. Thank you, Anne and you can call me Mags! Awww….I imagine that’s going to be cool and useful! 💚

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  3. I agree! Sometimes just letting a situation simmer a bit, allows new and improved ideas to come forth. Your “replacement” sounds perfect.

    Winnie must be part cat – that is totally a cat move! Haha.

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    1. Hello my lovely! Letting shit happen, right? 😂 It works perfectly, for now and the first place Winnie had an accident was on the bathroom floor, so at least she knew the right room. She does love cats! 🥰

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  4. I love this! There’s something quietly profound about how life can remove things we didn’t even realize we were still attached to. That old rug had history, but it took an unexpected mess to finally let it go. What stood out to me is how the replacement was already there all along, just overlooked until the space was made for it. A good reminder that not every disruption is just loss. Sometimes it’s life making room for what actually fits the season we’re in.

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    1. Thank you and you nailed it! That rug had been with me a very long time and I didn’t even realize the attachment to it, until it was time for it to go. A better solution was waiting in the wings to be recognized in due season. Thank you for your thoughtful comment. 💕

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  5. I enjoyed this because it reminds me how often we mistake inconvenience for interruption when sometimes it’s actually redirection.

    That old rug had become part of the scenery. It was so familiar that no one was really evaluating whether it still belonged there. Then along came two dogs with upset stomachs and suddenly a thirty-year chapter closed overnight. I suspect life works that way more often than we’d like to admit. We get comfortable with things simply because they’ve been around a long time, not because they’re still the best fit for where God is leading us now.

    Your story also made me think about how frequently we pray for provision while standing in a room already filled with it. We ask God for a solution, and He quietly points us toward a woven jute rug in the next room. Much like the widow’s oil in 2 Kings 4, the answer is sometimes not something new arriving, but seeing differently what has been there all along.

    And I have to laugh at the dogs being confused about where to eat their treats. Creatures of habit, indeed. Then again, maybe we’re not all that different. We humans can stare at an empty spot where something used to be and mourn the loss while God is busy improving the décor.

    Sometimes a foul-smelling mess is just Heaven’s way of helping us take out more than the trash.

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    1. Hi Kimberly and thank you for sharing. There’s so much here that resonates, such as inconvenience being redirection. I agree the rug had been with me for so long, it was not even noticed and became more like a permanent fixture until Winnie helped. I found it interesting that I smelled the mess before I saw it, so thank God for warnings!

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  6. Hi Barb. I sincerely appreciate your blog. Just wanted to let you know why I recently took you out of the notification loop. My email inbox fills up with nearly 1,000 notices every day, so I have to limit it to notifications from those who regularly visit my blog. Good to see you back again, and thank you for being understanding!

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    1. Hi Mitch and thank you for your kind words. Oh my goodness…that’s a flood into your inbox and I would do the same as you! I don’t recall ever unsubscribing to your blog, but it stopped showing up in my Reader. I decided to investigate once I saw you liked one of my posts recently, so now it shows up and I receive an email which makes me happy. I truly enjoy reading what you write.

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      1. Barb, WordPress auto-unsubscribes me from people all the time, so I’m not surprised it happened to you too. Anyway, glad we’re reconnected.

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About Me

Grab a warm cuppa and soothe your weary soul inbarbsworld. I’m Barb, the writer behind this blog and I share through a clear, simple lens. I’ve lived a life filled with everything that money could buy, but in 2014 I left that life to feel myself living. Now, I know what abundance truly is and it can’t be bought.

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