Tag Archives: options

When You Don’t Have To

When the flooring in your house is wood and tile, but you have one rug in the breezeway. That one rug is where the dog will choose to barf.

Sunday afternoons were once spent cleaning house, but I don’t have to anymore. Living solo, the house stays pretty clean and now when I walk through the house each piece receives a questioning glance of, “Will you be a part of the next chapter?” If the item doesn’t speak to my heart, it’s posted for sale.

There’s one table I absolutely adore and what sits on it changes quite frequently. A couple of weeks ago, my daughter noticed the change and said, “Should I be concerned you already have a silver tree on display?” We originally purchased it as Christmas décor, but I believe it’s pretty anytime of year. The metals are fascinating décor, so I went one step further and moved more silver onto the table.

A new fragrance by Voluspa in the middle.

This morning I was outside watering the plants and thought, ‘you don’t have to’, because they’re calling for rain tomorrow, which is unreliable, but taking it one step further the plants really didn’t need it. It was routine from doing it all summer and now the temps are cooler so the plants need less from me. Let me tell you my darlings…that is a mighty good feeling when your life needs less.

Maybe I’m past the ‘needs’ of life and my heart is calling me to listen to the ‘wants’.

When we first moved to Texas, we had to follow my then husbands job here. From that point on, every house we moved into we did so because we had to. Sitting here today some 20 years later, my daughter and I wanted to move here, but now that she’s living own her own, I don’t have to stay. With my type work, I can live anywhere, or travel around living in various places, but when I think about staying put, my heart whispers…you don’t have to.

A Practice in Patience

I gave myself a practice in patience. You may be familiar with Bath and Body Works 3-wick candles, and that is what I chose to practice with.

It was given to me this month and has a Christmas scent. The other day it was lit, but all three wicks were not much of a flame. They looked as if they could snuff out at any given moment. It’s a relatively new candle and this was the second time it’d been lit, so I blew it out and pondered my options. Bath and Body Works stand behind their products, so I knew I could take it to the store and they’d replace it with a new one. That was an option, or I could be patient and work with it to see how far we could go.

I lit all three wicks and they were struggling to remain lit. I placed it in a draft free zone away from activity. Two of the wicks began burning brightly, but there was one that wouldn’t stay lit. It kept going out and I’d relight it each time. I forgot about the candle for a while, but the next time I walked by and took a look, all three wicks were lit! Two of them had been burning long enough to melt down the wax, so the third one could breathe. The two stronger wicks helped the one that was struggling. We need that too.

It took hours of working with this candle, but my patience didn’t wane. We don’t know for sure how strong we really are until an area is tested. We’re capable of more than we give ourselves credit for and we don’t have to be surprised by every test. We can test ourselves to continually redefine our level of patience.