In this story a complaining woman is told by the wise man of the village to solve the problem of her crowded house by bringing all the farm animals inside to live with the people. The conditions become so crowded, that when the wise man tells her it is time to take the animals out of the house, she feels blessed. The point is that her life had to be more difficult, before she could appreciate the blessings she had in the first place.
I lived in a big house on the prairie. I fell in love with a wonderful man from New York City and we married.
His whole one-room apartment was smaller than my living room! He had four small closets. One closet had been converted to a kitchen and another into a bathroom. Our deep love for each other helped me disperse most of my possessions and fit into our new life.
New friends told me how lucky I was to have such a large studio apartment. I did not know I was lucky until I saw that their apartments were smaller, more expensive to rent and received less daylight.
Two years later, we not only fit into the apartment, but thanks to my ingenious woodworker husband, we have plenty of room. Our living space is attractive and efficient.
Last summer, I received a new blessing. The adjoining one-room apartment became vacant, and we rented it. Now we have a place to work, read and write articles in the middle of the night, and receive guests.
At first I felt lost with two rooms and wandered inefficiently back and forth. Something I needed was always in the other room.
"Having trouble with this new freedom?" my perceptive husband asked. In fact, I was. And therein was the lesson.
Home is what we make it. And the blessings in our lives are always there. We must recognize them.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Linnie York has lived in a teepee and a penthouse. She has lived at 8,500 feet in Rocky Mountain National Park, in New York City, and on a 27,000 acre ranch in the Southwestern United States. She has owned a weaving shop in Amish Pennsylvania, a small sales organization, taught home school, worked as a nanny, a hospital administrator and home-birthed four children. Throughout all these experiences, she writes in a journal daily and is currently compiling the over 140 journals. Linnie paints, reads and writes voraciously. She is a published poet and artist. She is happily married and enjoys volunteer activities, with Eckankar being the major one.
For more of Linnie and her paintings & writings, please visit www.linnieyork.com
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