wilderness first aid kit for the soul

midweek messiness, grateful lists and flowery-goodness come a little late this week.  life is busy with the balancing act of boys back at school, homework, dogs, a broken washing machine and the ever classic oven door handle falling apart. At first I thought the oven door handle was the least of my problems until I tried to bake something actually in the oven. well guess what? you need a handle to open and close the oven door! sigh. it feels like our home is perched precariously up on a balance beam, there are some moments we have just the right amount of time to play and work and do all the things that need to get done; & other days, most days, even some years, it feels as if we are slogging up hill through the mud in the pouring rain, only to find out we have carried our coals to Newcastle and our oven door is broken. 

We jimmy-rigg oodles of things around here. In part because we hate calling our landlord & in part because we like the independence of doing it ourselves, the satisfaction of mending something broken. However, there are times and things we can't ace bandage and we have to ask for help, oven doors and all. I not only have a hard time with those moments, relinquishing control to someone else; but I often struggle, struggle in knowing when to yell for help, when to blindly wander around the mountainside at dusk, and when to just sit calmly waiting for someone to find me. When life skids itself into these moments, when I am frozen in my inability to put my next foot forward (as I am afraid I will get completely knocked off my feet), I usually have to sit in the shadow of the mountain and cry.  There I usually find out it is not really about the oven door, or the stinky clothes piling up on top of the washer, there is usually something deeper adrift in my soul that is working itself out. And I know that a good cry is part of the wilderness first aid kit for the soul. Perhaps that is the foundation to any soulful first aid, a good cry. however, what goes in my wilderness first aid kit, may not be the same as yours. right now in mine i would put crushed petals, and lemons, sticky mudpies, the scent of the milky breath of a newborn, and the warmest sleeping bag i could find(to keep me warm while under the stars until the morning). If there was any room left in there, I would place my camera & my notebook with my HB pencil. wilderness first-aid kits, they are ever so nice to have around. They help you get to that moment, the moment of corner turning. When you can turn a corner and think about life and all its messy ways, and of all the ways to make lemonade out of lemons, crap into compost and above all how you are going to jimmy-rigg your monkey-wrenched plans. I think thats when you know that you are there. 
         So we live our lives out, seemingly ever so short in the great expanse of the universe, taking in the gifts, jimmy-rigging when we can, calling it in when we can't. & i believe that the lives we all lead are pretty good ones. & as for me i may not always know where i am going with it all or what i am doing, but i love my life and am ever so grateful for it. 
              with all of its jimmy-rigg back flipping sobs. 
              and happenstance filled happy shouts of joy. 
                                                          xxoo

and i would really love to know, what would you put in your wilderness first-aid kit? oh please do share your soulful first aid fixes!!...p.s. a tent to hide in, a place to rest my head and little gardens in the home also knit up my soul.