I often wonder if my kids ever listen to what I say. My lengthy lectures are usually met with rolled eyes. My angry outbursts bring glares of disapproval. When I try to share life lessons, I find my kids dozing in the back seat, lolled to a peaceful nap by the droning of my voice.

Occasionally, however, I am surprised by the wisdom of my children. In a fit of sorrow, as I cried inconsolably, my daughter patted my back and said, “Don’t worry mom, everything always works out.”

Although I continued crying, I was touched to hear my own words coming back to haunt me. Funny, they seem so much more conciliatory when I’m saying them, rather than receiving them.

My son recently began moving his Lego’s to our garage attic. He had previously used a small empty room in our basement for his Lego City, but found the confines of the room to be too containing. Often I would find myself tripping in the dark over helicopters, fire trucks and villains forgotten in the hallway.

During a momentary epiphany, I realized that we have an entire attic over our garage, mostly unused. There are a few boxes of Christmas decorations and some camping gear, but the bulk of space sits unused.

The older girls decided to make a craft room out of part of the attic, and hauled up tables, stickers, and craft supplies of all sorts. I think they finally realized that I am no help when it comes to things of a crafty nature, so they decided to find a place where I wouldn’t constantly hover over them, asking irrelevant “mom” questions.

Gunnar decided to recreate his Lego City in the attic, and to help him out, I swept all the Lego’s into a box. Much to Gunnar’s dismay, not all of his creations survived the sweeping.

I admit to being a little overly zealous in my endeavor. I am thrilled to get the Lego’s out of the hallway. I may have swept them just a little more vigorously than necessary. Some of the Lego creations may have come apart as I tossed them carelessly into the box. I’m not sure that had anything to do with it, but I am admitting to my part in the destruction of Lego City.

When Gunnar discovered his millions of Lego’s thrown haplessly into a plastic storage bin, he was less than enthusiastic about my help. He stormed out to the garage, insisting that he could get the work done himself.

About an hour later, he came into the kitchen, looking somewhat abashed.

He told me he was pretty mad when he found all his stuff broken. And he tried to devise a pulley system to pull the enormous box of toys up the attic stairs. As he hoisted the box overhead, he watched in alarm as it began to slant. Then, the box crashed to the ground, thousands of Lego’s covering the garage floor.

Gunnar said, “I was so mad when all my stuff broke. Then I thought that everything happens for a reason. So I figured I could make a bigger and better Lego City in the garage.”

With that, he happily bounded back out to the garage to begin the daunting task of sweeping up thousands of Lego’s.

I stood in wonder at the brief conversation. My eleven-year old son just repeated and applied something I preach to my kids every day. And he applied it much more quickly and cheerfully than I ever have.

Everything does happen for a reason. Whether it’s Lego’s crashing to the ground, a car breaking down, or your sweetheart breaking your heart. It is a waste of time to ask ‘why’ something happens. Instead, like Gunnar, ask yourself what you are going to create out of the situation.

You can’t control everything that happens in life. What you can control is your own response to situations. Your response is your responsibility. What can you make of the things that life throws your way?

Try looking for opportunity in the situations facing you. You might just find yourself with the biggest and best Lego City ever created.

Namaste, friends.

My good friend and I were recently discussing the value of the middle of the road. He had just returned from a trip to Florida, where the politics, like the weather, can be heated and extreme.

The middle of the road is the place for me. You can see both directions pretty clearly, and there’s plenty of time to get out of the way when something big comes hurtling toward you.

Extremism in politics, religion, weight loss philosophy and just about anything else, is disruptive and causes a lot of unnecessary anger, angst and frustration. When I was a homeschool mom, I saw many extremes.

One group I discovered early on called themselves “HELM”, Home Educators Like Me. This group believed in an unschooled approach, in which they trusted that their kids would naturally pick up whatever knowledge they needed in their lives, without formal instruction.

When I realized that some of the teenage boys in the group couldn’t read, but could play video games for hours at a time, I decided the group wasn’t for me.

Then I discovered “HUG”, which sounded nice. Who doesn’t like a hug? Hugs are good, especially when you are trying to teach a houseful of kids how to read. In this instance, HUG stood for Homeschoolers Under God.

Don’t get me wrong, I like God. And I believe a strong spiritual background is important for everyone. But this group went to the opposite extreme. Those kids had to call their parent’s ma’am and sir. I think they wore hand made uniforms, too. They spent a lot of time on rote memorization of everything from the U,S. Constitution, to the Bill of Rights, to the multiplication tables (all the way up to 20x20) and bible verses in the original Hebrew.

Out of the frying pan and into the fire. I’m sure both groups had a lot to offer, but their extremism was a turn-off for the average Joe. Back in the day before computers, I opted for a mix of educational materials from a variety of sources. And I’m glad to say that four of my eight children are in college, while the other four are still finishing various levels of elementary, middle and high school. The middle of the road served us well, in a number of aspects.

I consider myself a pretty average Joe. The middle ground offers compromise, negotiation and cooperation. These are all things I can get behind, and they are all skills I want my children to learn. Extremism from either end of the spectrum rarely produces tangible results. Instead, it is often divisive, disruptive and contentious. Life is too short for so much anger.

I understand that many may view the middle of the road as a cowardly place, where wishy-washy new age thinkers hang out — and maybe it is. But, the good news is, we have chocolate here, and coffee and wine. And we have conversations in which both sides of an argument are evaluated for their validity.

Here in the middle of the road, you will find a compromising group of people who may not believe as you do, but who will defend your right to believe as you wish.

And here in the middle of the road, we let the voices of the masses be heard, not drowned out by anger. In the middle of the road, you are free to speak without fear of being drowned out by an angry mob.

Wyoming is the perfect place to be in the middle of the road. There isn’t too much traffic here, so you can see for miles. And as the Equality State, people are theoretically inclined to engage in intelligent discourse.  I think we ought to start a middle of the road political movement. We could call it common sense.

Common sense works for Wyoming and it could work for the rest of the country too. And if you’d like to join me for some chocolate and a glass of wine, I’ll meet you in the middle of the road.

Namaste, friends