Refinishing

294 Marbles 
Sometimes you have to kind of die inside in order to rise from your own ashes and believe in yourself and love yourself to become a new person.
Gerard Way

    Last year for Mother’s Day, Ex-man bought me a single wooden deck chair for me to lounge in and enjoy.  Later that month, he would tell me he was leaving and that lone chair would become a metaphor for our relationship - no complete matching sets in our backyard.   
    All winter long, the chair sat out in the rain and snow.  It became weathered but internally, I was feeling so winter that I didn’t notice.  I’d pass by it everyday but it didn’t even cross my mind to bring it inside to protect it.  I don’t think I was even thinking that Spring would come and I would want to lounge outside again. 
    This morning I noticed it as I passed by.  I had a good look at the chair and decided to take action and revive it again.  I sanded it until I came down to the unweathered wood and then I stained and varnished it. 
    Mother’s Day is soon (in my place in space and time) and the chair and I have endured the winter.  I’m looking forward to enjoying some warming Spring sunshine as I sit in my new again chair. 
Something to be grateful for today: the smell of water on warm cement.

Look around you and notice anything that needs reviving.  Can you make it a project to breathe new life into your surroundings?  Goethe said, “We must always change, renew, rejuvenate ourselves; otherwise we harden.”  I believe this sentiment applies to our physical surroundings: We must always renew, change, rejuvenate our surroundings otherwise they stagnate.”