June 5, 2025

I feel closer to what matters most when I am in Nature or with those who constitute the “what.”

This morning, the sun battled against an impenetrably solid, smoky-gray, concrete sky until it burst forth.

I went to the roof to witness the sunrise’s glowing victory, rimmed in white, yellow, and orange. It erased the distance between my sons and me, even though we were miles apart.

However, as I breathed in the higher-than-normal levels of carbon monoxide and other pollutants in the air due to the raging Canadian wildfires and saw the now two-day effect on the sunrise, a soft sigh escaped my lips, and my shoulders slumped momentarily.

In these conditions, anyone with a compromised respiratory system has a greater struggle to get oxygen.

Surveying the distance between my sons and me, an invisible umbilical cord took deep breaths from me to them, and my heart filled with gratitude for life.

The burdens allow us to see the beauty more clearly, and the triumphs only exist in the tussles with the challenges.

What are you seeing through the lenses of sight, heart, and mind? How do you choose to respond to what you see?