This is my last week at the Idaho cabin. Today’s trek took me off the beaten path, through a green gate, around a couple of bends, across a small creek, and then uphill where the deep prints left by elk in the soft spring mud have now hardened into pitted landscape.
Photo: Marlys
This thought from an unknown author:
No one is you and that is your super power.
Photo by Derek Thomson on Unsplash
Some of you may know that my dream house would be a sturdy, old barn repurposed into an open-beamed, warm, welcoming home. With mountain views.
Photo: Houzz.com
According to Mark Banschick, MD, my 15-year-old grandson and I had a lucky week.
Photo by Irene Dávila on Unsplash
Being the organized, neurotic list-making, project-oriented girl I am, I need this refresher course from time to time: People always trump projects.
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
When Tyler Henderson was diagnosed with brain cancer, Marni brought their two sons home for online schooling so they could spend as much time together as a family while they still had the hours, the weeks, the months.
Turns out, they only had fifteen more months together. Which wasn’t nearly enough time.
Tyler and Marni
Michael Jordan, arguably the greatest basketball player ever to fly the planet, had this to say about success:
I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times, I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again. That is why I succeed.
Photo: sneakerbardetroit.com
There’s a difference between appreciating something and having something take your breath away.
I appreciate that I have a dependable vehicle. But I find myself holding my breath over certain strains of music. Or wildlife in my backyard on a snowy day.
Wildlife and wild color in my backyard (photo: Marlys)
I walked beside my husband, Gary, with late stage prostate cancer for ten courage-filled years. The experience taught us to pay attention to life and its simple pleasures and the astonishing people who surrounded us in love.
There are numerous folks dealing with cancer who have suggested it is a gift … and countless others who would never refer to it that way. “Would you re-gift it?” someone once asked sarcastically.
Photo by Natalie Collins on Unsplash
But consider this thought from one of my cancer-fighting friends …
Copyright © 2025 Marlys Johnson
