Struggles…

I have often heard people say, “Why is she struggling?” or “Why is he struggling?”

Then these individuals go on to say they have a new car, a great home, a wonderful husband/wife, two beautiful children and a rewarding career. And the list goes on and on.

Have these people ever stopped to think that what they see is the outer appearance or an image. (And under no circumstance am I judging anyone).

These appearances or images are perceptions these people want their friends and society to see when they look at them. This is only the surface of what these individuals are about and not their inner self. They may be struggling with issues not even those who are close to them are aware of.

This is not me giving self-help advice and I am certainly not going all psychology/therapist on those of you who read my post each week.

I am speaking from experience. We all at some point in our lives go through struggles that we have a hard time dealing with. We often hide them and sweep them under the rug as my husband has often told me I do when I am struggling with things.

But our struggles we do not have to deal with alone. (I am guilty of this). My husband tells me to share the burden and I have been able to do that. I have come to understand that if it is my struggle it is also his struggle.

If you are wondering why I am writing on this particular topic today, then I will tell you. I woke up this morning feeling extremely off. Sort of wondering if I should just go back to bed and try it again later, but I didn’t. I talked to the one person (my husband) I can share my struggles with and we sorted it out.

Struggles come in all sizes. It may be something as simple as when are we going to have time to get a particular task accomplished. However, it could also be something that is life altering that needs attention and a long conversation so it can be sorted out.

Anyway, I guess what I am trying to say is don’t just automatically think someone has it all when internally they may be dealing with the struggle of their life. A smile or a friendly hello may be all it takes to help make their day a little bit better.

“When in doubt, just be!”

~Heather Kinder

Air conditioning blues…

When you think of the word blue you probably think cold or cooler weather. Not in our case! Our definition for the past week or so has been the central air does not work. So, I guess you could say we were singing the blues as one great big hot mess.

The air conditioner started making this funny noise a few weeks ago. The noise where you just know it’s not normal, but you also are hoping you are hearing things because no air = a hot mess.

The noise was real. The fan just up and quit moving. My husband took it apart oiled the fan and what do you know it works. Yay!

Don’t go getting excited so soon about the air working again. Less than an hour later we are running to turn it off to make sure it doesn’t build up friction and burn the house down. That would be a definite cause for the air conditioning blues and the great big hot mess.

To make a long story short, my husband takes apart the air conditioner so many times to oil the fan in hopes to help the heat issue he loses count. And we soon realize there is no hope for this old machine.

I have every fan we own on in the house keeping it cool or cooler at least. Thankfully we had a spell of cooler weather, but then Mother Nature decided to bring on the heat.

It was time to start looking for another source of air. 

Our poor dog would curl up on my lap hoping I could make it cooler, but the only thing that did was make both of us hotter and I ended up covered in dog fur every place I was soaked in sweat. In other words, you couldn’t tell if I was the dog or if he was. Talk about RUFF!

We go to Facebook Marketplace to search for an air conditioner. I messaged any and all people with one for sale that looked like it may work. You know I got to wondering if people actually wanted to get rid of them or not. Not a single message back.

Finally Friday evening we receive a message back not minutes after I messaged the lady about her air conditioner she had for sale. She actually wanted to part with hers. Again, to make a long story short we went and picked it up that same evening and we ain’t singing the blues no more.

Image taken by Heather Kinder

"When in doubt, just be!"

~Heather Kinder