Count you blessings

    Everything you know, every one you have ever spoken to, everything you own, everything you believe, everything you love, every lesson you have learned either good or bad is a blessing. 

     The fact that most preppers believe they will lose the things they like, love, and are used to, doesn't mean they are not blessed.  The blessings they have become the reason for hanging in there just one more day.  Many prisoners of war held on to their sanity or hope for tomorrow by focusing on one or two precious memories to get them through the night.  Everything has a value great or small and is now or will be revealed later as a blessing. 

   I don’t want to play my pain is bigger than your pain, it isn't.  It’s your pain.  I really don’t want to hear how my belief may or may not fit into your religious belief.  That is a nice coincidence.  I simply believe you know a lot, have a lot, love a lot and it is all of value. 

     While prepping, keep your memories close to the front.  Remember the lessons and the stories told by your elders.  There is a great pool of knowledge in their past for you to draw from.

     Recently, my eighty year old mother described to me her grandmother’s “summer kitchen”.  They lived in Pennsylvania in a coal mining town where her uncles made daily rounds of the tracks near the mines picking coal that fell from the coal cars to feed the cook fires at home.  She described the addition at the back of the house that was made to use as a kitchen from Easter to Labor Day.  The windows on the north and east side of the porch were always open.  The stove was smaller than the one not ten feet away in the actual kitchen and the breeze took the heat out the windows.  The summer kitchen was closed with the last canning of the summer garden crop.  All the dishes, flatware and pots and pans moved back into the house as they were washed at the end of the canning day.  The windows were closed and no one went there again until Easter the next year. 

     What a lovely blessing.  The knowledge of the floor plan, the reason for the layout, the fact that it all worked out to keep the house cool enough to sleep in, the rhythm in the timing of the seasons was all a blessing.  Her Grandmother was still clocking her life by seasons, and scheduling the work for the ‘holidays’ when everyone was home to help!  It was brilliant!  Maybe I don’t need to know how and why to build a summer kitchen on the side of the house where a cross breeze occurs today.  But, I am blessed with that knowledge forever, in case I do need to know.   

     I am a middle child.  I have the wealth of knowledge of the siblings that came before and after.  I do pretty well at Jeopardy, too!  I have always liked being told a story and I am able to recall these stories and use the morals or the instructions contained therein, when I need the information.  I am truly blessed.  If you don’t remember the lessons shared with you, try to develop a good library of survival books.  Consider writing things down, maybe compiling your own family history, concentrating on how we once lived.  Take lessons to acquire skills or training you may need.  Read more.  Listen better.  Bless yourself with knowledge.

      Set your mind in a place that lets you enjoy your prepping..  Surround yourself with the like minded. Bless yourself.  Prep yourself.