I feel fortunate today that I have yet another day to live. So far, so good. As I sat at the breakfast table eating my bowl of frosted shredded wheat bites, I was as usual watching the events taking place in the back yard. It rained hard and heavy last night with accompanying thunder and lightning. What once was dry, solid ground is now soggy with numerous puddles of standing water. My attention was focused on the rare squirrel hopping about the concrete blocks stacked on the side of the yard. Rare because we seldom see a squirrel in the yard. The blocks were leftovers from our house construction 6 years ago. The squirrel was trying to get to the pine tree a few feet away without using the ground. Whether he didn’t want wet feet or there was something in the palmetto bushes he was trying to avoid was uncertain.

After darting around a few minutes and checking out all possible avenues of potential use, he finally hopped onto the white 4×4 post marking the boundary line and made a leap towards the lowest branch on the pine tree. He didn’t make the jump successfully. He landed instead on the branches of a bush/tree below and after a few frantic moments of scrambling and another jump, he made it to the pine tree from there. I can only assume he will be after the pine cones so abundantly present in that tree.

I couldn’t help but think that like that squirrel, we are faced with challenges every day we live. Our goals may be different, but like the squirrel we tend to scramble and find the best route to our goal only to discover that there often is no good route and we have to take a chance and a leap of faith. And then make the best of it until we succeed.