The Gifts
Our focus this week — July 23–30: “Duty”
Today’s MotD: The Gifts. Initially doing the “hard stuff”, the things we must do but don’t want to for whatever reason, may seem awkward, challenging, tedious, boring, exhausting even, and yet as we go through them, one after another, we build up momentum…we may even find it rewarding.
For instance, in 2019, my siblings and I had to clear out my dad’s house, two-car garage, and full size carpentry shop of 70 years worth of accumulated “stuff”. To be fair some of the stuff belonged to us kids. Since my brothers had day jobs, most of the tasks fell onto me.
I’ve known for quite some time that that would be the case; so I was okay with it. I always thought it would be something we could do over time. Instead, we had just six weeks to make it all look presentable for an open house and putting it on the market.
At times I would walk into another area of the house that needed clearing and feel completely overwhelmed. I would allow myself that indulgence for a couple of minutes before letting the “get ‘er done” part of me take over and dive in.
I can’t even begin to tell you all the gifts I experienced going through that process. This is the house my brothers and I grew up in—it had a lot of history: good, bad, and ugly. Yes, it was exhausting. Yes, it was grueling at times. Yes, it was daunting. But in the end, the best gift was knowing that something we had all been treading dealing with for many years, was now done. We did it! I did it! I experienced total glee and satisfaction. What a gift.
A little side story here…There was so much stuff to go through that I knew that while most of it was of little value, I also knew there were “gems” to be found. So rather than worry about missing anything of value, I adopted and repeated often the mantra: I allow myself to easily spot anything of value.
And because of that I found many “gems”. Two in particular were especially nice. I managed to find a brand new, in its original box, Montblanc fountain pen (google it). It was buried in a box of mostly junk. It could have easily been something I overlooked but it caught my eye.
I also found a gold wedding band on a curved iron rod that was holding up a shelf in my dad’s shop. It was one of those things where I just happened to be standing in the right place and looking around at a precise angle to even spot it. Actually I wouldn’t have even seen it had I not been inspired to remove the shelf in the first place.
Essentially it comes down to this…there are gifts to be had by doing the stuff that needs to be done.
How about you ? What gifts have you experienced by doing the hard stuff ? What helps motivate you to DO the hard stuff ? What gift could be experienced now by you moving forward on one of your “hard stuff” tasks that you’ve been putting off doing ?
BTW…Here’s the before…the front and back view of today’s puzzle piece and the pretty ceramic box that holds all my numbers from which I randomly choose each day’s puzzle piece number:
Peace & Blessings,
Maureen
The Mandala Lady
Creating Mandalas 🔆 Awakening Inner Harmony
ABOUT THE 2025 Mandalas of the Day
Throughout the year, I’ll be building one large (48”x48”) Tibetan-styled Mandala one piece at a time…one puzzle piece at a time, that is. The mandala design and the reversed puzzle side were printed on artist-quality watercolor paper. The forward facing puzzle side was printed on a 48”x48” wood panel.
Each day, at random, I’ll be painting in watercolors one of the 365 watercolor puzzle pieces, that by the end of the year will become Archangel Mandala #4. Read more about the Archangel Series. The word/message for each piece will be inspired by Melody Beattie’s book “52 Weeks of Conscious Contact”.
Ultimately, the message of this mandala is about how we are all uniquely part of the one.
Mandala of the Day 