The Patio

Every spring after the winter snow has melted, my concrete patio looks dirtier and dirtier. A few people told me that they would bring over their power sprayer that shoots out water and could blast off the dirt, but it never happened.

Last week as I was looking out my window at the dirty concrete, I made a decision. I went to the hardware store, purchased a $6.00 broom with very stiff bristles. When I got home, I filled a bucket of water, went outside, poured water onto a section of the patio, picked up the broom and began to scrub. As I scrubbed, I saw the water turning green and realized it wasn’t just dirt on my patio, but mold…yuck!

For two hours I watered the patio and scrubbed. Then I waited to see what the patio would look like when the water dried. Had my work been effective? Did I make a difference?

It turns out I had. The patio looked wonderful. There were still spots to go over, but I was happily surprised at the change.

Sometimes we all feel a bit “moldy.” We have no energy, and life seems a bit gray. This can be especially true during divorce when our path forward often looks unclear, and we don’t think we can do anything about it.

We wait for someone else to fix things and forget we have the power to do that ourselves. It may take a lot of work and be messier than we expected, but we also discover we can do things we never thought we could and that we have more power than we realize. There will always be a little more to do, but we CAN make a difference, and we CAN be effective in our own lives. 

Then, when we look out our window, we see a clean space to sit and enjoy the sun and imagine the possibilities our new life holds.