After what seemed like eleventy billion days of 100+ degree temperatures, yesterday began with a few glorious summertime thunderstorms, and ended up a gorgeous, cool and breezy day. We spent almost our entire day in the back yard sitting on the porch, playing some baseball, fishing bugs out of the pool, you name it. We weren’t about to be cooped up in the house all day when there were so many other things we could be doing.

The rain brought some critters out of hiding, and it wasn’t long before we noticed we had some company on the back porch.

He looked like the happiest little toad, sitting there taking a break in some fresh rainwater. We of course had to stop long enough to take some pictures of him. (It’s the only thing that keeps Dex from picking them up and trying to keep them forever.) But then I told the boys to leave him alone so he could venture out and continue on about his froggy business. We played for another hour or so and went inside to have some lunch.

When we came out an hour later, there he sat, right in the same place. Three hours after that, when The Canadian got home from work, he still hadn’t moved. He wasn’t taking a break at all. He had found a safe place, a comfort zone if you will, in the broken bumper of a toy car, and he didn’t seem to have any immediate plans to leave it.

I can’t say I blamed him, it did look pretty cozy and secure. But what he couldn’t see is that literally two feet away from him were the biggest, fattest, juiciest grasshoppers I had ever seen, a steady stream of other random bugs crawling across the concrete, and an old kiddie pool with three times as much of that fresh rainwater he seemed to love so much. Yet he was missing it all, because he refused to leave his safe place.

He and I have a lot in common. I’ve missed out on a lot of things in life by being unwilling to leave my comfort zone. And now, I have no right to complain about what I don’t have or what I haven’t accomplished because I made the choice to fall victim to my fears instead of pursuing the things I really wanted.

Mr. Toad finally left his bumper late in the evening when the chaos of a rowdy game of tag scared him away. It wasn’t because he was finally brave enough to venture out, it was only because his comfort zone wasn’t so comfortable anymore. The sad thing is, when you have to make a running escape, there’s no time to enjoy what’s been around you all that time. I don’t want that to be me. So every day, I’m making very deliberate moves toward stepping outside of my box, voluntarily, before I’m forced out in a dead run, missing out on everything around me in a desperate search for the next safe place.