Good Thoughts to Live By #6 & Eden's Beauty & The Ugliest Thing in Our Neighborhood--Won't you be my Neighbor?

[he/she who] shall . . . trust in God shall be supported.  Alma 36:3; Alma 38:5  

This is what sits in my front yard to mar the beauty of our surroundings, though it is trying to blend in to the earth the longer it's there.  I would like to blow this thing up.  Seriously.  I even asked the neighbor if he had any dynamite when I was in an especially frustrated and desperate mood.  He actually had some previously, but had gotten rid of it because it had become unstable like me.

Instead of seeing our home first upon arriving at our driveway, people see this pile of junk.  It has been rotting into the ground for 18 years and has tried my patience beyond measure.  My husband is attached to it--must be one of those things only a man can understand.  It is embarrassing to tell people how to find our house:  "Drive down the road until you see this ugly, beat up, yellowish, rusty Ford pickup yard ornament squatting in our front yard--you can't miss it."

Obviously, because I have "nagged" about it being hauled away a few times over the years when I've been ready to tear my hair out, the man of the house has dug in his heels and refuses to see this is important to me.  Very, very important.  I-have-about-reached-the-end-of-my-rope important.  It is also a safety hazard due to the fact it harbors a huge hornet's nest, which is deadly if my oldest daughter should happen to be stung and not have her EpiPen.

I prayed a lot for patience when I was younger and the kids were growing up (when you really, really need it).  That prayer has been answered without a doubt.  Now, why can't my prayer be answered that this monstrosity disappear?  Or, am I missing something here?  Is this actually a thing of beauty?  An antique worth admiring?  A symbol of man's independence from women's judgement or control?

Ah (light bulb goes on), I am starting to get it.  It is all in how one wishes to look at this.  It is actually a work of art in the process of becoming a pile of rust, which cannot reach its destiny until the elements have worked their magic upon it.  Oh.

The optimist sees the rose and not its thorns; the pessimist stares at the thorns, oblivious of the rose.

   -Kahlil Gibran

We see things not as they are, but as we are.

  -Talmud

A giant goldfish?

We advance toward our destiny when we encourage others to reach theirs.
  -Paul Wesselmann

Our next-door neighbor's sign

Remember there is no such thing as a small act of kindness.  Every act creates a ripple with no logical end.
  -Scott Adams


In the midst of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.
  -Albert Camus

The future belongs to those who see and trust the best things in the worst times.
  -Harold Blake Walker

A warm smile is the universal language of kindness.
  -William Arthur Ward

Sometimes when I consider what tremendous consequences come from little things . . . I am tempted to think . . . there are no little things.
  -Bruce Barton


You can get everything you want in life, if you just help enough other people get what they want.
  -Zig Ziglar

Let your Life speak.
  -Quaker proverb

We must use time creatively and forever realize that the time is ripe to do right.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.

I saw, of course, the cliff,
I saw the turbulent ocean blue;
But everyone else was going that way,
So I thought that I would too.
  -Larry Lemming

All I have seen teaches me to trust the creator for all I have not seen.
  -Emerson