My drink of choice on any given day is water. Besides the odd glass of a Dry Red wine, water will always be my first choice.
Wine is forged in my Portuguese genes so don’t go all judgy on me.
I can easily consume up to 3 liters of water on a hot humid day. My fridge keeps water at just the right temperature and I have huge tumblers to refill to my heart’s content. Drinking so much water adds to its own set of problems. I’ll keep it short by explaining that I dilute my body of the much needed magnesium or whatever mineral my muscles needs on a daily basis. If I don’t take care the result is, well you guessed it, leg cramps.
I try to keep my body in top performance by taking my daily dose of whatever my age requires to keep it in Ferrari mode and not a VW beetle. Reaching my age, life becomes, well, quite delicate.
You might know that I stay in a beautiful seaside town of South Africa, where the weather pattern consists of hot humid tropical days. Our Summer days can become quite difficult to cope with if you don’t take care.
You can understand then when I say I drink a lot of water! On extremely hot days I drink more than usual water and I will not leave home without an ice filled container. This year’s summer was extremely hot as we had a couple Cyclones in our vicinity and of course it added to the summer heat.
One particular hot day when it came time for sleep, I dragged my tired body to take a cold shower and get ready for bed where I fell into a deep sleep very quickly. You know me by now. With my windows open to welcome the cool breeze, life can’t get any better. My open window is an open invitation to the odd mosquito family inviting themselves to tea on my account. I was way too tired to take notice of them. They came marching in quietly for a change.
One mosquito had pudding on a very succulent vein on my left foot. I hate it when they bite me there, especially when I sleep because who wants to wake up and scratch a never ending itch? My arms are too short to reach and there is no way that my Ferrari sports mode body would bend like a hula-hoop to reach the itchy spot.
I grumble as I lift my leg higher to get closer to my arm, which is much easier than lifting my sleepy body to reach the spot that is desperate for a scratch.
When my leg lifted into the air, that all too familiar shooting pain shot through my leg reaching into my brain. I am ripped away dreaming of Don Juan on his white horse, like a suction cup that popped. My eyes immediately jumped out of their relevant sockets, when that sharp shooting pain came my way in the form of a cramp.
My first instinct is to jump out of the bed. I am wide awake now. My calf muscle is pulling into a tight knot. My little toe pointing out north and my big toe is aiming its course to the south of the equator. The other 3 toes are so confused they don’t know if they should stay still or move with the north or south markers.
Walking it off is out of the question. I look up to the sky as if by some mercy an Angel will slap the demon away holding onto my calf muscle. I can feel it ease away and I can return to some normal breathing again.
Crawling back into bed cursing the mosquito that started all this drama. I lie awake thinking that no matter how well we can make sure that every aspect of this journey called life, is taken care of. There will always be that one thing to throw an unsuspected curve ball.
We will be on our merry way but then an unknowingly and unsuspected event will grab hold of us. Throwing us off course like the mosquito family coming for dinner.
I could have planned better by soaking my body in some mosquito repellent or added some more magnesium to my daily dose to prevent cramps. The list is long of could have done this or better prepared for that.
Life will always have circumstances or events that we have not planned. With this come many choices available to help navigate the road ahead. We can give into our fears and doubts or complain. Or we can stay in flow, take a breath and look at things from a different angle.
Make a choice to see that no matter what, you will be okay. God has never promised no storms or painful seasons. He promises to be with us. Always. We will go through the pain and uncomfortable times but we will never be alone in doing life. Even though it may feel like it.
Changing our perspective we will be able to step into the realization that there is another side of the situation we find ourselves in. We will see the bigger picture and will be able to move forward no matter how hard it feels.
For me now, the different perspective would be to load up on mosquito repellent. I don’t look good on a serving platter for the mosquito generation.