My perfect kitchen..

..is no more.

That was my thought as I leaned against the wall staring at the mysterious dent in my shiny, 18 month old, stainless steel refrigerator. I’d just concluded an exhaustive investigation into the matter, the prime suspect (my husband) maintaining his innocence under hours of relentless questioning. “Yes” he admitted, he’d snapped a few stems off my plant and toppled one of my pots in a completely unrelated offense while he was cleaning the rain gutters the other day, but THIS he insisted..THIS he did not do.

But if it wasn’t him, it had to be me! No one else has been in our house thanks to Covid.. but unless I’ve been sleep walking with a bowling ball in my hand, I didn’t do it either!

Spontaneous self-denting..? Is that even a thing?

Who cares, right?

Like with so many other things..it is what it is.. and you can either ruin your day (life?) over the thing or just undo the knot in your underwear and move forward.

I need to make peace with this dent and the “dentor”.. (whoever he is..) because this flaw is gonna be part of our daily life-landscape for many, many years. If I empower this, it can become the first thing I see every day when I turn on the lights in the morning and the last thing I think of when I turn them off at night. This is my “free pass” to be pissed off all the time- a constant reminder of how someone’s carelessness ruined something so beautiful.. so perfect.

When a permanent life “dent” appears we are faced with a choice: to obsess over, weaponize it, continue to be hurt by it.. or to refocus. We either promote this issue and it becomes the boss of our emotions, or we demote it and stay in charge.

The good news is that life dents can trigger a re-evaluative process as we broaden our view to include everything else that still works and is beautiful and possible. This is where expectations are right-sized and where perspective and balance are achieved. This is where breakthroughs happen. This is the hole full of doo-doo that can grow us into better people, where forgiveness takes root and grace blooms . This is where we find peace.. not in spite of life’s imperfections, but right smack dab in the middle of them all.

This is where I want to live.