Most of you are aware of the flooding in Australia, and what that has meant for people there.

I’ve been reading VandE’s blog and am amazed, and humbled, by her strength, and fortitude, and most of all, by her outlook: how grateful she is for the little things that can be salvaged from the mud and muck.

It really is just little things: a few pieces of china, one or two vintage patterns out of an amazing collection of hundreds.  Her house is gone.  Amazing historical dresses that she spent hours on are gone.  Most of her stash.

And with all this loss, she makes time to give us poignant, amusing, heart-wrenching mental images of what her world looks like in the wake of a massive disaster.  She doesn’t mourn, or regret.  She looks forward.  She is my hero.

I sit in my safe, warm, dry living room, and read about the devastation, and I think about my own life: the things I cherish, what I would save, and what it all actually means to me.

I hope that if I have to face a similar trial, I can also see the glass half full.