Recently on "The Journey with Grace," I ressurrected and published an older post, "Blue Morning Regime." This morning I revisited the subject matter….I awakened to "a blue morning." Some people's morning neurochemistry, explained my teacher, causes them to feel blue. Others, manic. And then throughout the day, it evens out. As I laid in the stillness of the morning's last hour, before the rude, abrubt buzz of my phone alarm, between unsuccessful attempts to meditate myself out of my body, I kicked around reasons for this blueness:

Change. More change. Change that my choices brought on. Those choices. Growth that would not have occurred without those choices.

The alarm rang notice of the last five minutes I could fudge beneath the covers. It was time to get Grace up. Mission accomplished. Dressed, fed, we wrapped ourselves in a quilt on the patio glider in the rare delight of a cool August morning. The bus came, and childlike, my teen scampered off into it's awaiting open door. I closed the patio gate and noted we'd only have this routine in this place for five more weeks and then we'll be moving to our new home.

These are happy reasons for this move. I am blessed to be moving into a home that is new to me and will be permanent. And yet there was that cloud hovering low this morning. The blue one.

To leave it unexamined, said my teacher, to not call it into analysis, allows it to return again. Leaving it unexamined also allows me to play victim (to my choices,) fall into old habits, curl up and play the spoiled child. To analyze it allows me to tell the truth about the situation: I welcome the "adversity" of my life because without it I would not have grown. And, to dwell in the unexamined blueness, I leave the present.

The present. The present. Breathe. The small lemon that gushes a quarter cup into the bottom of the glass. The water that cools my stomach. The bird singing outside the window. The rare, refreshing chill of this late summer morning as I sit cross-legged, a blanket draped over my lap as I write. 

Examine. Tell the truth. See the virtue in "adversity." Stay present in the gratitude of abundance. GrateFULLness.

Photo: Spring-Summer travel series. Here, the Virginia Creeper Trail, just before we peddled seven miles in heavy downpour. It was an adventure.