Five years ago this summer I was awakened by what I thought was a car alarm blaring somewhere on the street. It was around 2:00 in the morning and there was a fierce storm raging. The alarm just kept going and going and in a total fit of annoyance I slammed the window shade up to see if I could figure out whose car was keeping me awake. That’s when I realized that the sound was coming from inside the house! It was the alarm on the sump pump, notifying us that the backup battery had kicked in. The rain was coming down hard and fast and the sump pump couldn’t keep up. Water was seeping into our basement level, which is part of our living space (our house is a raised ranch). We were lucky that between my husband and I and our sons, we were able to get everything except the furniture upstairs, and even luckier that we only had about 3-4 inches of water before it dissipated. We realized later that we had forgotten about the Christmas decorations but other than a few boxes that were soaking wet, we thought we had been able to salvage everything. We were also extremely lucky that our insurance agent had insisted that we obtain a rider to cover such an event.
The next morning, I texted my fellow BlissNinny friends to let them know what was happening and had to laugh when Judi texted back that there were probably easier ways to get new floors. She was right, of course. I’d been talking for several years about how much I hated the carpeting in my house and wanted to get rid of it.
I did feel sorry for myself here and there. I lost my much-loved collection of Santas because we didn’t realize that one of the plastic bins had a crack in it and all of my Santas grew mold. Even though we had a restoration crew in within 24 hours, we had trouble getting the waterbed to drain and so they had to leave half of the carpet in the bedroom until we could empty the bed, and boy did that wet carpet start to stink after a few days. And then there were the industrial fans and dehumidifiers. Our house was LOUD! And my dog, Foxy, who had been through so much trauma in her life, was so very confused and hated the noise.
Over the next few days, as I drove through the neighborhood and saw the piles of furniture and personal possessions on the curb, I thought yet again how lucky we were. Then we met with the insurance adjuster who told us of other houses in our neighborhood that he had been in and how so many of them had six feet of water or more in their basements. Even though I hadn’t really been overly upset by this event, thinking about our situation compared to others helped flip my perspective of the “flood,” and from that point on anytime someone would ask me about it, I would tell them we were lucky and “Hey, I wanted new floors anyway!”
Over the next few months and into the beginning of winter, as we went through the process of repairing the damage, I had many opportunities to shift my perspective. My thoughts were racing in many, mostly negative, directions:
“Finding a contractor you can trust is hard. Getting the floors we want, within our budget, seems impossible. As long as we’re doing this, let’s redo the fireplace hearth – dang, tile is expensive. All that baseboard and quarter round has to be stained or painted. I’m so over living in the tiny spare room. All of my stuff is packed away and I can’t get to anything.”
Now the old me, who didn’t know how to work energy and wasn’t mindful, would have probably moved into a state of being a worker bee, dealing with all of the issues one by one, from a place of frustration or even victimhood. The conscious me wanted to see the lesson I was being given and so I looked for it, welcomed it, and embraced it.
With that in mind, taking those thoughts one by one:
“Finding a contractor you can trust is hard” – One of my greatest friends, and one of the most trustworthy people I know, is in construction. He became our contractor, doing the job on weekends. It wasn’t hard at all; in fact, it was getting easier and easier.
“Getting the floors we want, within our budget, seems impossible” – Nope. At the suggestion of our friend and contractor, we checked into a brand of flooring he recommended, and it was perfect and affordable. Easier and Easier.
“As long as we’re doing this, let’s redo the fireplace hearth – dang, tile is expensive” – Well, everything has been pretty easy so let’s keep that going. I found exactly what I wanted at two separate home improvement stores for around $150 total for supplies.
“All that baseboard and quarter round has to be stained or painted” – I admit, this one took me a bit of time to make the perspective switch. You see, I’m the painter in the family and I’m pretty good at it, so I knew that I would be the one doing the staining and painting. And it was a lot because we decided that since the place was already in chaos why not take advantage of the opportunity and rip out all of the remaining carpet upstairs and put in new floors. After an initial snit the first day of doing the work, I realized that I actually did enjoy it. I liked seeing the wood tone change. I liked the creativity of it. I liked spending time by myself to listen to music or meditate as I worked.
“I’m so over living in the tiny spare room” – This one really didn’t take much to change perspective. I had a warm, dry house. I had a futon on which to sleep. Overall, it was pretty comfortable.
“All of my stuff is packed away and I can’t get to anything” – Not really. I had my kindle, and all of my books were still on the shelves downstairs. I could access my other stuff anytime I wanted. Yeah, a bit more difficult than just opening a drawer or cabinet, but I still had it. I didn’t lose an entire floor of possessions.
A few months after the project was completed another friend helped me (ok, really, I helped her by handing her paint, brushes, and sponges) put the final touch on the remodel. As I mentioned earlier, I live in a raised ranch, so when you come in my front door, you have to go up some stairs or down some stairs. Each of those flights of stairs has seven risers. The final project was stenciling the chakra symbols on each riser. While my friend was working on the second to last riser on the steps going downstairs, I measured the final, bottom riser and taped the stencil in place. After it was done, I realize that I measured incorrectly and when standing directly in front of the stairs, the bottom chakra is not centered with the other six. Oh no! But here’s the thing that this entire blog is leading up to – If you stand off to the left, it looks even more off center than it is, BUT, if you stand to the right, it looks perfectly centered. It is all in the perspective; it’s all in how you look at it.
I know that my incorrect measurement happened exactly as it was supposed to because every day, I have a perfect, built-in reminder to look at things from all sides, all perspectives.