Beef & Broccoli with Fresh Ginger and Black Rice

Spring is in the air here in the Midwest and with the  warm sun and fresh air, I get inspired this time of the year to try new recipes and create new dishes out of ones I have read about or heard about before. To me, cooking is very much an art that I love to play with!

Looking through my May Bon Apetite magazine I found a Beef and Broccoli with Yams recipe ( page 45) that seemed interesting but  I didn’t have any Yams on hand and…it didn’t look as if it would be enough heat in it for my fire- loving family.

 

So with a little tweaking, I came up with a version of my own and thought I would share it with you here. It was a big hit at our house, with a bright flavor and just the right amount of heat. I made little comments to help back off some of the heat if you like a more mild flavor.

 

Enjoy! I would love to hear what you think about it!

 

Beef  & Broccoli with Fresh Ginger and Black Rice

 

 

Beef & Broccoli

 

¼ cup water

3 Tablespoons packed golden brown sugar

3 tablespoons oyster sauce

1 tablespoon Szechwan sauce (adds heat, leave out for more mild version)

1/3 teaspoon dried, crushed red pepper ( ¼ teaspoon for mild)

1 pound flank steak, cut in half lengthwise, and then cut crosswise in ¼ strips

1 ½ tablespoons cornstarch

4 cups broccoli florets

1 cup sliced mushrooms (optional)

3 teaspoons peeled, finely chopped fresh ginger

1/4^th orange, peel and white part removed, finely chopped

2-½ tablespoons Asian Sesame oil, divided

 

 

Black Rice

 

1 cup water

1 cup chicken broth

1 tablespoon chili oil OR olive oil and pinch of red pepper flakes

1 cup of black rice

1 teaspoon fresh chopped ginger

 

Add all ingredients together except ginger. Cover and simmer on low heat for 40 minutes or until all liquid is absorbed. Add salt, pepper to taste and stir in Ginger. Serve.

 

 

Start rice first. While rice is simmering:

 

Stir first five ingredients of Beef and Broccoli list together, mix until brown sugar is dissolved. Set aside.

 

Place sliced beef in large bowl. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, add cornstarch and toss to coat. Add orange bits and one teaspoon of ginger.

 

Heat 1½ tablespoons oil in large wok or heavy skillet on high heat. Add beef and stir-fry until no longer pink, about 3 minutes. Transfer to large bowl.

 

Heat remaining oil in same skillet, add broccoli, mushrooms and ½ teaspoon ginger, add salt and pepper to taste, add sauce and toss to coat. Turn heat down to medium high, cover and cook until veggies are tender, about five minutes. Add beef to veggies, toss to coat, sprinkle with remaining ginger, serve with rice.

St Patrick’s Day Round up!

 

 Old Celtic Blessing

May the blessing of light be on you–
light without and light within.
May the blessed sunlight shine on you
and warm your heart
till it glows like a great peat fire.

 How was your St. Patrick’s Day? Fun? Boring? same old, same old? very special?

Being that we are a family that can trace both mine and my husband’s Irish heritage down to single towns in Ireland,  ( and not that far away from each other!)We tend to make a big deal out of the holiday.

My husband John’s family has been doing a wonderful and somewhat unconventional celebration each year of getting together and cooking Stuffed Cornish Hens out on the grill. Not that there is anything all that Irish about Cornish hens, but they tried it one year, liked it and have kept with it for around 20 years.

When we got married, and I added my Irish/Italian  family to the mix, it expanded the group from a modest number of 6 participants to a gang of 16! SO, the party moved over to our house and gave me a chance to stretch my party planning creativity. This has become one of my favorite holidays. This was our third year now and we had a great time!

The menu is planned out ahead of time and doesn’t change much from year to year. Each member of the family focuses on bringing special dishes. John’s mother and brother focused on making the homemade stuffing and stuffing the Hens. My mother made the homemade double baked potatoes, My daughter brought salad and beverages and my son and my future daughter-in-law brought desserts galore! John and I make two types of homemade beer, one Irish stout and an Irish Brown Ale, homemade bread, appetizers and the asparagus.  Then John and his assistants spend the day outside on the patio manning two grills to get the hens grilled to perfection. Everyone pitches in and works together to make the feast amazing!

 

           

Emilie’s amazing desserts  will now become St Patty Day classics, as I am sure everyone will clamour for them every year. They were as delicious as they look!

The table decorations are very simple too. I found a green St Patrick’s Day tablecloth on a clearance rack and the green pails were at Target for 2 dollars each. A little ivy tossed in the pails, a few sunny daffodils, two green candles and some green paper napkins filled out the whimsical and festive table. I love to put together simple and inexpensive items to create an artistic table presentation without breaking the budget!

 

The entire day was filled with Irish music that John had created a playlist of, there was much laughter and conversation, and a warm fire crackled in the fireplace adding to the cozy Day. The girls took some time out for a manicure session and took turns painting each others nails green.

 

One of my favorite things about being married to John is that we both share the value that Family comes first.  We love to have our family arround us, celebrating the special days of our lives and we love to take the little extra moments to add in the simple things that make it special. This St. Patrick’s Day is one that will be a lasting memory for all time and I am already thinking of new ideas for next year!

How about you? I would love to hear any ideas that you might want to share about how you spent the holiday. I am always on the look out for clever ideas to stick in my holiday planning journal.  Please share!

 

 

If you enjoy what you see here, you may also enjoy our sister blog: Life’s Little Inspirations, a blog about living an Inspired Life. See you there!

New Beginnings and a New Name!

If any of my long time readers have suddenly found this blog in their Readers this morning and are confused, I offer my apologies!

This used to be the original blog of Life’s Little Inspirations, however since we  moved that blog over to it’s new home in July of last year, this one has sat, silent and alone for the past several months.

Except it hasn’t. Despite the fact that I haven’t posted anything since last July, LLI- The Original has stubbornly lived on with readers coming here every day since we closed the doors. It makes me feel bad to watch these numbers of dedicated or new readers linger on each month looking for something new. 

So…I’ve come home, slapped on a new coat of paint and given it a new name. I will begin posting here again but with a tighter focus on all things related to Art in the most general sense of the word. Since I have many artistic endeavors such as writing, theater, painting, gardening, cooking…just to name a few…this will be a nice place to share some of my more personal artsy side.

I am not going to take away any of the old posts, even though they are now posted on Life’s Little Inspirations. But starting today, this home has a new purpose and one I hope everyone will enjoy!

 

Welcome to the birth of: The Inspired Artist!

If you enjoy what you see here, you may also enjoy our sister blog: Life’s Little Inspirations, a blog about living an Inspired Life. See you there!

MOVING DAY!

Everything has been packed up tight and the moving truck has pulled out of the drive way. It’s time to say goodbye to our first little home at Life’s Little Inspirations and move in to our new big Community Center by the lake.

Harry and James from Men with Pens have been hard at work helping me…the technically challenged dim bulb… maneuver my way around in a world that might as well be blind to me. I could NOT have done this without them. Harry-forever more to be known as my blogging Knight in Shining Armour-is the most patient man I’ve ever met (with the possible exception of my husband) and has even managed to teach me how to do some of this stuff myself. That is a miracle!

James gets the credit for pushing me into this and holding me up with his uncanny knack for writing just what I always seem to need to hear at just the right time. His post on How to Exceed Expectations was the exact post that convinced me to quit thinking about moving and actually DO it. Then today, while I spent the entire day laboring over things I had no idea how to do and faltering with last minute jitters, there he was again, holding me up with his post on Learning to Fly Without Wings. It made me smile. Take about inspiration! There have been several times in between where both of them have been right there with just what I needed at just the right moment without me even knowing I was going to need it.  No doubt about it, the Pen Men live up to their reputation.

So now the champagne is uncorked, the glasses are filled and the party is ready to begin.  Won’t you raise your glass with me? I’d like to propose a toast.

To the Men With Pens, Harry and James, the Diamond Standard Bearers of Customer Service and Satisfaction. Thank you with all my heart. You are both wonderful.

Now, let’s go to http://lifeslittleinspirations.com/ and meet up at the new place! See you all there!

NOTE: Life’s Little Inspirations has moved off of this blog to our new address at http://lifeslittleinspirations.com/ There are new updated articles added there for your enjoyment. Please click on the link and come and join us there, we are waiting for you! If you are a subscriber here, please stay and enjoy this New Blog, The Inspired Artist! And please take a moment to re-subscribe at Life’s Little Inspirations at the new address so you don’t miss anything new posts there as well! Thank you for your support!

A Lighthouse in the Storm

My mother used to say that there are only two things in this world you can be sure of: DEATH and TAXES.

As I have gone along the path of life, I have discovered that there is a third unflinching item that can be added into this small select group. CHANGE.

Change will happen. Good change, bad change, the pleasant surprises along life’s little way, the minor irritations that set you off course. Yet, for a lot of us, the idea of change fills us with a sense of dread and fear that compares to very little. We fear the unknown. We fear what we can’t visualize and what we can’t control.

Even when we know that we have reached the end of a path. Even when we know that we can no longer stay on the same road because it isn’t good for our well-being, our relationships, or our health or our finances, we hesitate to jump to the next step. Change is one of the major life stresses. Even the good ones. Psychology tells us that events such as getting married, taking on a new job, or moving to a new home rank in the top five major life stresses right up there with death and divorce.

So is it any wonder that when standing on the crossroads of a decision, any decision, that many times the natural response feels like FREEZE- DON’T DO ANYTHING!!!

My experience with that response is that if you tread water long enough, you may likely find yourself blown about in a nasty storm. When we don’t react, the world reacts for us and often we pay the bitter price for not have taken the wheel of our own course.

So how do you know what’s right? What helps you to make the decisions of when to act, which road to go down, how to behave, who to trust, or why you need to make a change in the first place? Do you take each decision as it comes or do you turn to a beacon of light that is constant, unwavering and steady to set your path straight?

Ships tossed and torn in the dark stormy sea don’t have the luxury of taking their time to thoughtfully think through each carefully laid out plan. They must react, and react quickly or risk being sunk or crashed into bits of driftwood against the jagged rocky shoreline. They depend on the beam from the lighthouse to show them the way to safety and shore. They trust the wisdom of the guiding light, grateful for its perseverance and ability to stand the test of time.

Where is your lighthouse? What is your lighthouse? Do you know? Have you thought about it? What are your guiding principles, your unwavering values that keep you focused through the darkest hours, through the fears of change? How do you set your course day after day, year after year, time after time?

Change is coming to Life’s Little Inspirations. With it will come our Lighthouse. Not the one in the post today, but a brand new one that will be our guiding light for all the promises of the future here. I am very excited. I can be excited because the vision and the principles and values of what I want this community to be have become very clear over the last four months. A lot of that has to do with all of you and the part that you play in building this community, adding to the conversations, sharing your stories, lifting up each other and supporting each other.

Over the next week or so, I will be posting less than usual as I work behind the scenes and get ready for some of these changes. Then the first week of August I will take a planned week of unplugged rest and vacation with family to the beaches of Michigan.

When we return we will embrace the sands of change and head into the future with the light to guide our way. I am so excited that you will all be a part of it.

Onward…into the future.

NOTE: Life’s Little Inspirations has moved off of this blog to our new address at http://lifeslittleinspirations.com/ There are new updated articles added there for your enjoyment. Please click on the link and come and join us there, we are waiting for you! If you are a subscriber here, please take a moment to re-subscribe at the new address so you don’t miss anything! Thank you for your support!

Weeds

Yesterday, I spent the entire day pulling weeds from the gardens. Great big piles of them. Some of those weeds had become larger than the flowers. I could feel them laughing at me as I tugged and pulled, as I muttered at myself, berating myself for letting things get so out of hand. Oh sure…we’ve been out playing, enjoying the summer sun, making every day count.

While we’ve been doing that, the weeds were raging a battle in the garden and doing a victory dance. Well not for long. The weeds are gone and today I pay the price as I gingerly walk about the house, muscles crying out for relief. “What were you thinking?” They would like to know. “Did you have to tackle every single weed on the same day?”

Well, um…once I got started….I wasn’t thinking about my aching muscles or the pain that would been be the price to pay. I was only thinking about weeds, the way you take your eye off of them for a moment and they take over. How you then have to fight back with a vengeance.

I think weeds are a cousin to laundry. Weeds and laundry and the mail. Insidious nasty things that look soooooo innocent. You skip doing the laundry just one day. The next thing you know you are out of underwear and there is a mountain of dirty clothes in your room and you carpet has disappeared. Drop the mail on your desk for just one day without sorting it and shebang…the top of your desk will disappear without a trace. Take you eyes off of your garden and wallah the weeds will gobble up your flowers faster than you can blink.

I am pretty good about laundry most of the time. Flylady sends me these wonderful little e-mails that say “Time to reboot the laundry” and it’s just enough of a reminder to click my brain into action to go throw in a load and go put away the last one. She doesn’t remind me to toss my junk mail but I have set up a system for that and frankly most of the time I will open the mail right in front of the recycle bin, so I give myself better than 50/50 on that one.

But I am going to have to admit to a miserable grade this year so far on weeds. Someone is going to come along and take away my gardening hobby status. You would never guess that I love to garden from the look of things. Its a case of having so many hobbies and things that I enjoy that I just can’t do them ALL well. The garden is suffering. So…that area gets a little more attention for awhile.

Awhile back I wrote a post about Balancing Balloons and keeping them all up in the air at once. Even within my Hobby balloon, I can’t keep all my hobbies up at once! Sometimes I have to make choices or juggle them back and forth for awhile. Time to put the garden back on the front burner so I can enjoy its beauty and not battle the weeds.

As I was pulling the giant weeds yesterday, I was reminded yet again, how much simpler it would have been if I had just taken a few minutes each day, to pull the tiny weeds from the garden instead of ignoring it altogether and having to spend a gorgeous Sunday pulling Monster weeds and paying the price on a Monday in pain. I know this. Yet… it’s a lesson that comes back to haunt me over and over and over. With weeds, and with life.

Don’t ignore the small things. Don’t procrastinate. Be diligent and daily maintain what needs upkeep. Weeds have an amazing ability to grow and they grow really deep roots if you let them. Catch them while they are little and yank them out by the roots.

I am going to do better. I promise my aching back. I really am.

Big Erasers

Last night, my youngest daughter came to me frustrated by something she was trying to draw. Irritated, she handed me the blue pen and the paper she had been working with. “fix it.” She cried. ” It isn’t working.” She had toiled with it past the point of polite requests or wanting an art lesson. She just wanted a magic wand waved over her picture and have it miraculously turn into the image of the raft floating on the lake that she saw so clearly in her mind.

I looked up at her from my writing. “You did it in pen, we can’t change it.” I stated.

“Go bring me the art pencils and we can do one together, one we can work out the details, fix the mistakes.” She went off, unhappy about it, but returned a moment later, pencils in hand.

“I don’t see why I need to use a pencil.” She grumbled. As we began to work, the problem became very clear. I sketched and asked questions, drawing out from her mind what it was she was trying to achieve. I put a mark down on the paper. “Nooo, that’s wrong…it wasn’t like that.”

“Honey, that’s what we have the eraser for.” I patiently erased the mark, ready to put down a new one a little farther over.

“But I don’t want to have to ERASE, I want it to be PERFECT.” She was getting distressed. “It will be wrong!!”

“Honey, ” I glanced over at the clock, knowing bed time needed to happen very soon. “That’s what they MADE erasers for. NOTHING is perfect right away. You have to work on it. You have to be willing to make mistakes or you aren’t going to get anywhere.” I blew out a breath of exasperation.

We ended the drawing session. She was too tired, I was too impatient. Some things are better left for other times.

I tried to go back to my writing but the moment had been broken. I thought about all the times in my life I had been just as frustrated because I couldn’t do it perfect the first time. How many times I had given in to irritation because I couldn’t *start in pen* and never have to worry about making a mistake. How many times I felt less than talented if I had to take out the eraser and start over or go back and redo something.

My daughter doesn’t fall too far from the tree.

This morning, in my quiet reading time, I opened randomly to a page from The Sound of Paper, by Julia Cameron. My eyes lit on to the following words.

Teachers are everywhere when we are open to them.

But we cannot learn everything at once. We must first learn progress not perfection. Too often, we measure our early creative attempts against the masterworks of accomplished artists. Falling short, we become discouraged. We have not witnessed their learning curve. We have seen the Godfather trilogy, not Coppola’s beginning films. In our imagination, the early works of accomplished artists must be marked by genius. It isn’t always so. Art is a combination of talent and character, and many times the artists who win do so because of their stubbornness. They refuse to take no for an answer.

Talent, character, stubbornness and…I would add- a willingness to fail, be wrong, learn from mistakes and go on. Make the next mark better, the next words brighter, the next experience more brilliant. What is true in art is true in life as well.

Thank God for big erasers. Thank God I don’t have to live my life in pen.

NOTE: Life’s Little Inspirations has moved off of this blog to our new address at http://lifeslittleinspirations.com/ There are new updated articles added there for your enjoyment. PLease click on the link and come and join us there, we are waiting for you! If you are a subscriber here, please take a moment to re-subscribe at the new address so you don’t miss anything! Thank you for your support!

Feet in the Sand

Yesterday marked the middle of summer. How quickly the time is rushing by. If I had an hourglass of sand it would be draining down and I would be fighting the urge to turn it back over and begin again, making the sands last as long as possible before the dreaded days of Back to School are marching in with autumn winds.

We are playing and enjoying the summer beauty as much as we can. The children enjoy lazy afternoons at the pool and time with their cousins and friends. The dining room dinner table has been set aside for outdoor meals in the backyard by the grill and fire pit. The garden awards us with colorful produce for our evening meals.  John and I have had a wonderful time canoeing, biking, going for long walks, and even taking a long day at the Renaissance Faire going back into time and history to visit the Lords and Ladies of Queen Elizabeth’s day.

This last weekend, a most enjoyable evening was had cooking out with best friends and chatting over a crackling fire until wee into the night. It doesn’t get any better than this. May and June’s frightening storms have given way to blue skies and warm days and evenings. We are treasuring every day. Yet still it flies.

Yesterday, to mark the middle of summer, I scooped the children into the car and drove the 30 minutes to the State park where we can walk along the beach of Lake Michigan. The weather was a hot 90 degrees, not a cloud in the sky but the water was chilly and the waves felt like ice smacking at our feet as we walked along the rocky shore. That didn’t stop us from wading out into the frigid water and letting the white frothy waves lap at our legs. The children picked up interesting rocks and skipped them across the water’s edge. They competed to see who could skip rocks the best. They compete over everything. Even rocks. After a bit, one of them sat for a few minutes and dug around in the sand playing and I wished for all the days in my childhood that I had sand buckets and sand castles. We hadn’t brought one. Next time, I thought lazily. But then realized- It had been almost five years since the last time I had driven a whole 30 minutes to see the beach.

In five more years my son could be a sophomore in college, my daughter will be close to graduating High School. The time for sand castles and buckets will have passed us by. I had a sudden urge to dig my feet deep in the sand and not let go. Hang on to the icy lapping water of the shore line, fix my eyes on the horizon and stay there in that moment with them. I looked at both of them, completely unaware of my rushing emotions; they played with the water, the pebbles, and the sand, each other. I dug my feet farther into the wet sand and let the water rush over my cold toes. Freeze frame. Life is moving too fast. I didn’t want to let go of the moment.

I sighed.

I looked at the time. It was time to go. Deadlines and places to be and the next place on the day’s schedule were calling. But we had managed to carve out an hour or so of time in the sand that I know I will hang on to for a lifetime.

 

NOTE: Life’s Little Inspirations has moved off of this blog to our new address at http://lifeslittleinspirations.com/ There are new updated articles added there for your enjoyment. Please click on the link and come and join us there, we are waiting for you! If you are a subscriber here, please take a moment to re-subscribe at the new address so you don’t miss anything! Thank you for your support!

 

Finding Friends

The very first friend I ever remember having was a charming girl named Melissa in first grade. She had bright blue eyes and yellow hair cut in a chin length bob that bounced and swung when she moved her  head. Her laugh was more of a giggle and she found everything to be the funniest thing she had ever heard. I followed her all through the first grade, her humor sweet ambrosia to my serious nature. I still remember the time that she got the Mumps and missed school for a few weeks. It was as if someone had turned out the lights, leaving the school dim and dull. Her sunny presence made everything a joy.

We moved after first grade, out to the country for several years and I lost track of her. For those years that I lived there I never found a new best friend, or even any true friends at all. I played with my siblings, hung out with my books and writings and spent my time playing in the fields. When we moved, yet again the summer before fifth grade, I never looked back, I had no one to leave behind.

By the time I reached 8th grade, I still hadn’t found a social group of kids or one best friend to call my own. I hovered on the sidelines, being friendly but had no social network, no one sharing sleep overs or long conversations. I was lonely and I wanted friends. I made a genuine decision to actively make some new friends. Unfortunately, the friends I found were not any mother’s dream for their daughter. Over the course of the next three years I got into a lot of trouble with my new friends and made some poor choices that had life-altering consequences. It was time to grow up. It was time to make changes. I couldn’t go in a new direction and keep the same friends. I didn’t want to go back to a life with no friends at all.

But I did. Sixteen years old and alone with a child, my *old* friends suddenly had nothing in common with me anymore. They wanted to party and play and have fun. I had jobs and money to earn and a child to take care of and an education to figure out. There was no place to meet in the middle. We went our seperate ways.

I met a few new people. One was a woman who needed a roommate because she was down on her luck. I thought we would be friends. She forged a check out of my checkbook. I asked her to move out. There were more after that…too many to mention…It would be a long post. What I began to learn was that while I thought I was picking friends that cared about me, they were picking me because they wanted something from me. Money, help, babysitting, favors, an hour or so of listening to their troubles, every day… It was tiring, exhausting. New baby, too much work and friends who were freeloaders and users.

I needed new friends. Again.

Why was I so bad at this? I gave and gave and gave my friends everything they wanted. I was there for them. I helped them. I listened. They were never there for me when I had troubles. They never listened to me if I had a problem, We never did things that interested me, it was always things that interested them. And these were ALWAYS the kind of friends I had.

If you always do what you’ve always done, you always get what you’ve always got.

The definition of insanity. Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. It was time to look in the mirror. It was time to realize that the problem wasn’t the friends I was picking, the problem was me. Something I was doing, choices I was making, words said or not said. It was happening to me year after year with different people. No one is THAT unlucky. The problem was me.

I confessed my concern to a friend that seemed to be different than the rest. I had been going through a particularly rough time with a personal relationship and she asked me about it. I clammed up. She called me on it. “Listen, ” she said, “You can’t have it both ways. You can’t complain that nobody listens to you if you aren’t willing to talk. If you always have to act like everything is fine. If you are never willing to admit that you have a problem or that you need something. You have to be willing to ask. Let a person know how you feel once in awhile.” I was shocked. She was exasperated with me.

I started journaling about it. As a life time journaler and writer I realized that I had been using my journal as a friend to tell my troubles to. I listened to my friends but my journal listened to me. There was no two-way street in any of my friendships. And it was my fault. I never spoke up. I never let out my true feelings. I wasn’t being honest or authentic, I just let everyone go about their merry way, and did whatever they wanted. They had no idea I wasn’t having fun, wasn’t happy, wasn’t feeling I was an equal…because I had never told them.

My friends weren’t mind readers. I wasn’t talking. We were at an impasse. But there was an even bigger problem. Before I could tell them what I wanted, what I needed, I had to figure it out. I had spent so long stuffing my thoughts and feelings down that I couldn’t just draw them up on command. It took practice. Hard work. Sometimes I would have to think of it ahead of time and practice saying it out loud. It sounds silly now, all these years later but it’s true. I had to learn how to be an authentic friend.

I have good friends now. Great ones. Married my best guy friend one year ago this coming up August and my best girl friend and I are going on ten years this August. Happy Anniverary to both of the JK’s in my life.

I have other friends too.  Off-line and On-line. I have lots of friends but at the same time I am pickier now then ever before. Pickier because I choose friends according to my values and interests, not by who’s around or who will give me the time of day or who seems to *need* something. Time is valuable and I have to make choices to spend my time with the people who are going to value the same things that I value. I choose to value hanging with *Like-minded* people that have things in common.

Sometimes friendships are for a time. People come into your lives and then they pass through. There was a purpose to it, a lesson, a message  or maybe just a little comfort to be shared at that point in the journey. There is no guilt in letting go of a friendship that has drifted out of its prime. But at the same time, there is nothing in the world more valuable than the honest to goodness love of true friendship and doing what it takes to keep it together.

What is a Warrior

Being a Warrior doesn’t mean winning or even succeeding. It means risking and failing and risking again, as long as you live…”
~Richard Heckler, In Search of the Warrior Spirit

Are you a Warrior?  What comes to your mind when you think of that word? Is it the battle cry of noble men racing into battle for causes greater than their own lives? Is it mighty sacrifice, the greatest of all love laid on the line for the needs and lives of others? Is it the ability to overcome the odds, continue on in the face of defeat, never say die, never say quit?

When pushed to action, where is the warrior within you? What does it take to sound your battle cry? Does it have to be a last straw that gets you going or are you marching on every day, battling the villains that would keep you from victory?

What is the mindset of the Warrior? What makes him different from the pack? What sets him in front, when others would fall behind and lose ground?

 Is being a warrior different than being a leader? While there is just one leader, one commander heading the charge, there can still be an army of warriors battling together, banding arm and arm, teams of them linked by loyalty and commitment to a noble cause.

I think about this concept, this word and I don’t have all of the answers. But I can sense the idea of it. A strength. A tenacity. Indomindable Spirit. Honor. Formidable Bravery. Getting back up when others would have stayed down and quit fighting.

We all face battles in life. None of us are exempt. To wish for a charmed life without problems or battles to face is as silly as spitting in the wind. It will get you nothing but spit on your face and nothing learned, nothing gained. How  you face your battles in life, how  you choose to battle is the mark of a good man or woman. Not whether  you have them. How  you manage them.

So…do you face life’s battles like a warrior or do you run and hide, wishing them away?

I have heard five different stories about cancer this week. Three about women who are battling breast cancer and yet are spending their time being committed to reaching out to others to make their world a brighter better place. One about a very brave woman fighting back from cancer, her second time in remission from a type of cancer that she should have had a very low chance of surviving. She is one tough cookie. The fifth one passed away this week after a very brave and hard battle. She left behind family and friends who’s world is forever changed by her example of love and courage.

These women remind me that how  we face life’s battle is the true test of our honor, courage and love. Even the little day to day ones. The cloudy days, the headache days, the crabby days. People like this inspire me, sometimes shame me, always make me proud, always make me humble and remember my priorities. If they can fight the BEAST of Cancer, we can fight the beast of mundane life.

Like warriors. With honor, patience, love, commitment to each other. Never giving up. When we fall, getting back up quicker and doing it some more.

No one said it is easy, this thing called life. It’s easier  when we do it together. It’s easier still when we remember to stand tall, arm and arm and fight for the important things in life.

 Like Warriors