Throwback Thursday: Happy Anniversary

Throwback Thursday: Happy Anniversary

Dandelions

Yesterday was a weird day. June 4th, 2025 marks eight years from when I was in the accident that completely changed everything in my life. It was quite a while after that accident that I started this blog on my road to recovery, and I started with a post called Searching For Dandelions. I wasn’t sure where this blogging road would take me, I just wanted to write down my thoughts for my children.

Perspective

So when I woke up this morning with an image of dandelions in my head, I needed to write about it. The image was a side-by-side comparison photo of the same dandelion-covered lawn. The caption underneath was something like Weeds Destroy Perfect Lawn and on the other side was like Wildflowers Everywhere! But it was the exact same picture on both sides. The only difference was the caption – the perspective.

The Truth

I’d be lying if I said I always looked at the bright side of things. When I was a kid, I tried to find the silver lining in everything. But as I got older and things seemed to get progressively harder with no letup, I confess, my thinking started to turn negative. It’s taken a lot of work to retrain my brain to start looking for those silver linings again, to be grateful, to have faith that God sees the bigger picture in my life. The truth is, I’m totally a work in progress. If you’ve read this blog for any amount of time, you can see my struggles played out in an endless game of Operation. Carefully trying to extract the negative parts and being violently buzzed into dropping the funny bone when I accidentally hit the sides. Then, trying again.

That game was not relaxing.

Neither was Concentration, for that matter.

Actually,, those games were not about relaxing at all – they were about building resilience, determination, and capacity to deal with life when everything you’ve built flies apart. They forced you to do the same thing over and over until you could remain steady through the buzzer,  rebuild even after all your work was wrecked after running out of time, begin again, and feel good once you beat it.

Side-By-Side

Thus, my side-by-side dandelion comparison picture isn’t simply about perspective, it’s about training our minds to roll with the punches and extract the beautiful in the everyday. I don’t remember anyone ever saying the game was unfair as we tried to catch the tiny plastic pieces that had just been flung out of the board as the timer went off. I don’t remember feeling like I was specifically being targeted when the buzzer made me jump while trying to remove a femur. As is the game of life. Of course, my lawn has dandelions! Dandelion seeds were specifically designed to be able to travel on the wind so they could go everywhere. That’s why you find them growing in sidewalk cracks, out of walls, in manicured lawns, and invading gardens.

Looking Back

So today, instead of looking back and agonizing over how I’m still dealing with the fallout of that accident eight years ago, I’m going to look for the wildflowers that grew as a result. Same lawn, different attitude. The world looks so much prettier, hopeful, and inviting when you focus on the wildflowers.