Discarding and Keeping

Some people who are very dear to me are cleaning out their garage, deciding what to keep and what to throw away. It’s a big job but when they are finished, they’ll have room for more important things. Until then, though, those old, useless things are just taking up space.

Their cluttered garage is like our minds, sometimes crowded with things that have no value and, worse, things that rob us of happier thoughts. Negativism, discouragement, condemnation, remorse, all are like junk from the garage. They should be thrown into the trash can because that’s where they belong. Failures, defeats, mistakes, grief, sins, ugliness, disappointments are stubborn things that don’t want to give up their space in our minds but we can get rid of them by refusing and replacing them with positive, happier thoughts. It takes practice but it is worth the effort.

Darcy Campbell, Flora Tucker, and Ned McNeil are upbeat characters in my cozy mysteries, but there are times when things get them down. In  Grave Heritage, at one point, Flora was almost overcome by discoveries about her family’s past. Do you know how she faced them? She laughed them away! It worked. Laughter is a good way to deal with that ugly voice that would like to make us miserable.