Even Hard days hold beauty
Yesterday, I was crabby.
It had already been a long week. I worked early in the morning, and I had a plan for the rest of my day. Nothing exciting—I just wanted to get a few things done, have some time to myself, and decompress.
I was tired, and I needed that time more than I realized.
Then the plan changed.
A family member needed me to pick him up—three hours away.
So, I got in the car.
It was a long drive, and by the time I arrived, I was exhausted. My patience was gone, and unfortunately, it showed. I wasn't the person I wanted to be in that moment.
And yet, somewhere along that long ride, there were rainbows.
Not just one. We saw several.
For a moment, they made me look up and notice something beautiful in the middle of a day that hadn't gone anything like I had planned.
The rainbows didn't make me less tired. They didn't give me back the day I thought I was going to have. And they certainly didn't excuse the way I behaved.
But they were beautiful.
Today looked different.
I got some sleep. I had most of the day to myself. I had time to slow down, decompress, and think about yesterday.
And I apologized.
Sometimes what comes out as irritability has very little to do with the person standing in front of us. Sometimes we've simply reached the end of our reserves. We're tired. Overextended. We've been giving and doing for so long that we don't realize how depleted we are until something else is asked of us.
That doesn't mean we get a free pass when we hurt someone. We still need to recognize it, own it, and make it right.
But I think we can do that while also extending a little compassion toward ourselves.
Yesterday reminded me that rest isn't something we should wait to need desperately. Time to ourselves isn't selfish. Decompressing isn't wasted time. Sometimes those quiet hours are exactly what allow us to show up for the people we love as the people we want to be.
And sometimes, despite our best intentions, we won't get it right.
We may be impatient. We may be crabby. We may wish we could redo a moment.
So we apologize.
We rest.
We learn.
And we try again.
And maybe, somewhere along the way, we remember to look up.
There just might be a rainbow waiting for us.