The Power of Creation...

It ended with a pink shelf, and started with some dishwater.

One evening last week, I looked down at dishes in the sink. My breath blew out, as something hot climbed up and around to lodge in my stomach.

Anger, a whisper came. You are angry, Julie. Yup, pretty pissed off. I hadn't heard Anger approaching, like we often do not.

A bunch of reasons crashed at once - damn cancer and cruelty in Ukraine and wobbly prosthetic leg, a broken oven door and an incident of disrespectful and ungrateful communication - a tumbling weed of yuck and muck.

You know it, this moment, we all do.

When our insides boil, from something or someone or ourselves, as we fill with mild annoyance or full blown rage or something in the middle. We feel fed up, put upon, crabby about some vague something or just because it is Monday and we got a parking ticket.

But then there is the shortest blip of time, easy to miss...the holiest blip of time, when we have a choice.

In this moment, Glinda the Good Witch from Oz whispers...

My dear, you have always had the power.

Standing at that sink with Glinda, I had the power to burn down a thousand trees or melt a hundred hearts, for I have scalded earth before. But that day, that holy moment I caught my words before they flew to an unsuspecting son or husband or cat or houseplant.

No this time I became very still to look around, steady my breath...

...and walk to a shelf, a simple shelf.

Prying open the paint can, dipping the brush in, letting my breath out...to begin stroke after stroke of pretty, dazzling pink. And as my arm moved back and forth, anger shriveled, bit by bit, chunk by chunk, second by second...until my breath was steady and even again.

The choice is ours, yes, the choice is ours.

How to use our broiling fumes...

...to grab the power of destruction or channel the power of creation.

For me...I just know that this pink shelf makes me feel really good and happy again, and so does Glinda.