DO WHAT YOU CAN LIVE WITH!!

If you can live with pissing and moaning and seeing the worst in every situation .. go ahead. I just can’t wrap my head around that approach. After all, negativity doesn’t attract positivity!! So.. yes, 2020 has been a challenging time for all. It’s also been a time to learn strengths and see areas we need to improve on! It’s given us opportunities we wouldn’t have had otherwise!

In every situation there is a silver lining! Today, I am in the back room at our salon > Thiessen-Elise Salon. My husband/business partner, who is also a hairdresser has time and has offered to touch up the rose gold hair color my son, Landon (who’s in barber school) just did.. the first applications usually have to be applied closely together to grab on the pre-lightened hair! I am enjoying a pumpkin latte from our local coffee shop, Mokas and writing while he finishes up with a client.

It is on my heart today to encourage anyone in my network to see and squeeze the positivity from their lives! I have always seemed to have some hard circumstance looming in the background, ever since I can remember. I still have been able to see the best in those situations. What else can we do? We can focus on the hard, bad and challenging. Honestly, I truly believe that it will attract more of just that.. hard, bad and challenging!!

Or we can choose happiness, work on improvement and overcoming.. AND we will attract more of that!!.. HAPPINESS, IMPROVEMENT and OVERCOMING!! Seriously.. we are what we say, think and do!! Take yourself out of yourself, birds eye view~ as my husband says.. and see yourself for what you are and what you want to be and start moving in that direction!

I consider myself a religious person, thanks to my Granny Corz, who brought me up in the Catholic faith.❤️ Meaning I try to live by the Ten Commandments.. #4 is to Honor your mother and father! I would consider my relationship with both my parents strained at this time! I just can’t imagine not having them in my life or not seeing them at least once a year! That’s what I can live with! My Dad is remarried and busy with his new life on a farmstead in western KS. My mom has struggled with her health and has been unable to work for the past year. She isn’t comfortable traveling to visit us. I know she is also nervous for my family to visit her because her lifestyle is different than ours. Honestly, I can’t imagine not going to her country bumkin’ lil’ house, where a plaque hangs on the wall that says, “I live in my own little world, but it’s okay, they know me here.”

This very weekend I have planned a trip with all four of our kiddos, who are sixteen to twenty years old. This is definitely not an easy undertaking! They all four work different jobs. I had them all request off. To me it is important to lead by example! That means having them unplug from technology and visiting grandparents!.. continuously learning to make the best of every circumstance, obstacle, situation in life. I believe they will find joy in it and thank me later!

The last couple of years I have made a trip on my own around Halloween. My mom is the spirit of the holidays to me!! That being said, a trip to visit her just as the holiday season begins to unfold makes my heart happy! Knowing I most likely won’t see her right at Christmas because we often host the rest of the fam or we want to travel to a destination with our own kiddos! Now that our kids are older and have jobs we haven’t all made a trip to Ford, Ks where she and her husband reside for a few years. So I decided this year I was going to make it happen!!

Some of the details of planning this trip have included.. me not marking off my own schedule on time😳.. so I had to move a couple of clients. Then, we realized that the Pumpkin patch event for Salina Homes (the real estate company that my husband just started working at since he became a realtor) is on the Sunday of our planned weekend trip. We have decided to have our middle son drive from Wichita, where he resides and goes to barber school on Friday night. We are planning some fun family time here in Salina. We will head to see my mom on Saturday morning and head back by nightfall. Even though we will all meet up around 6pm on Friday ..it would put us at our destination just in time for bed. So we decided to just make a busy Saturday day trip of it!

The reason I decided to share this story is because I want to encourage people to make a conscious effort to do what feeds their soul. My mom had been very emotional in our recent phone visits because she is overwhelmed by the anticipation of our arrival. I think partly because she is scared because the Covid-19 numbers have been rising in their area. Also, because she thinks we may have an expectation that she can’t meet. I have learned that keeping your expectations realistic is important. I know my mom better than anyone.. she’s my mom!! I will do my best to squeeze the best out of her. She’s an amazing artist and very outdoorsy. So incorporating those elements will make it good! They have a FuN haunted house in Ford that opens the night we are there… That’s what I built this trip around. I know we will all enjoy that!

It’s important for me to let my mom know that all things aside.. she has modeled and taught me how to make the best of every circumstance! Every day is a gift and to stay humble! The hard parts of our story will remain just that… the hard parts. I will always speak of my mom in utmost respect and honor because she is my mom. The one who gave birth to me at sixteen years of age.

We all have struggles and handle them in our own way. Making the best of every scenario doesn’t make the hard parts go away.. it should make us appreciate the good parts. I feel that we can love people who have caused pain. I believe that it is through a person’s own grief that grief is often caused. It’s a hard cycle. One that is only repaired or changed by a conscious decision to do so.

We all have challenging areas of life that we want suppress. In this moment, I hope to be a light and encourage others to do what you can truly LIVE WITH! Do what makes your heart happy! If it makes you feel better.. do that! If it continuously hurts .. work toward repair and forgiveness! We never know what each day will bring. We are not promised tomorrow!

I am praying for a weekend of good memories that outweigh the less-than-perfect parts!!🙏👍🤟❤️❤️❤️

Stay Rosy, Amber💗