The story I (Morgan) found myself in last night seemed normal (at least when I was unconscious): white feathers/butterfly wings and I can’t fly and I’m panicked. My panic wakes me and I look at the clock – 1:20am, so I grab a sip of water and lay back down. Except sleep doesn’t overtake me, instead it became one of those nights - a night when my thoughts run wild…preschool papers that need submitted, grants that are due next week, the film that needs funded, this blog post to be written, LGH’s tight finances, my plants needing watered, our volunteers in Uganda with lost luggage…and all the while the hands of the clock in our room were ticking, ticking and then it happened – bird’s chirping. No way! I thought – they aren’t going to tell me it’s morning, it can’t be. So I check the clock again and sure enough – it’s 5:00am! I had laid in bed for three and half hours trying to catch my thoughts and I was exhausted.

I got up and shut the windows (and the chirping) and curled back in bed and finally found sleep. My awesome husband got up with the kids later and allowed me to sleep in so that I could savor a couple more hours of much-needed sleep. Sleeplessness, a clenched jaw, and tense muscles (and a breakout) are usually my body’s way of signaling stress. I think it’s been mounting – the anxiety, fear, and burden for LGH. We’re still trying to practice gratefulness in the midst, but it’s always the constant battle with perception – the choice to live in the joy or the defeat and I think (no, I know) it takes practice (and lots of it)!

This morning when I finally got up I was reminded of Betty – our incredible sister-friend in Uganda who we met 4 years ago and helps take care of our volunteer/staff house in Uganda. She is my age – a single working mother (of sweet 3-year-old boy Kymbi) who is now taking care of her AIDS-infected mother who abandoned her as a young girl (talk about reasons warranting stress). Betty would call things ‘by the ways’ – those things that you go through that you challenge you and change you and make you a better person even though they are hard. Her encouragement and perspective have been so crucial to my coping and healing during difficult times in my life and again today I think about her - her courage, strength and love.

It’s perspective. It’s choice. And as Dave and I must constantly remind ourselves – the choice is ours (and either way we choose)! Will we become better or bitter? Soft or hard? More open or more closed? So yes, I am stressed and circumstances aren’t ideal, but I want more life, more joy, more fulfillment and I know this too shall pass and we will be changed (and better) on the other side – after all, it’s just a ‘by the way.’

*If you want to meet Betty and her son Kymbi – watch the little video above. A sneak peak at some of our Moving On footage!