Details; noun- the small elements that collectively constitute a work of art. These are the tiniest of things that if one isn’t looking, will go unnoticed. From the moment our eyes open every morning,’til we rest our weary heads, so many seemingly subordinate pieces of our lives remain unseen. What do you notice about this picture (courtesy of my friend Maria)? The very first thing I thought was “oh, its an eye.” And that is how our world sees life. Work is work, school is school, home is home, life is life. What if we saw past what things appear to be, or how they are expected to go.

When did life become so extreme? I wonder what the parents from “Little House on the Prairie” would say if they lived a day in our shoes. I would imagine they would find much of what we “do” with our time meaningless. I can just picture it now. A mother in 2018 meeting a mother from a small town in the 1870s. Can you visualize it? I might say something like “Hi, Im Danielle. And every time I look at my phone, I get stressed out by the 20,000 and one emails I have.” The prairie mom would of course have some questions. What is an email? And if this smart phone you tell me about is so helpful, why does it bring you so much stress? And what else have you been doing to let that many letters stack up? Once I explain how I’ve been busy working outside of the home, starting a home business, taking the kids to and fro, volunteering at church, scrolling through Facebook, posting stories on Instagram, going to the grocery store and ordering take-out, she’d probably raise an eyebrow or two. I’m sure by now you see what I am alluding to. How much unnecessary stress do we bring to ourselves? How different was life 150 years ago? For food, they had to work for it! For health, they had to find natural ways to stay well and homeopathic methods to treat things. They loved deeply, worked hard and were firmly rooted in family. There were no social media notifications tearing their family dinner apart. There were no phone calls from solicitors. They didn’t spend hours on their iPhones watching everyone else’s lives go by, whilst missing out on their own.