Last night at 11 p.m. Dick and I heard a loud boom followed by pitch blackness. We had lost all electrical power. The abnormal total darkness caused me to lay half awake until 1 a.m. when I decided to call our power company and report the problem since they apparently weren't aware of the outage's occurance. After I was assured that they would check out the source of the power outage and remedy the situation, I grabbed the flashlight and headed out onto the backporch to scare away a raccoon that was attempting to shake loose a birdfeeder. He normally doesn't bother the feeders if I leave a porch light on but, in the darkness, he was having a party. My flashlight scared him off into the woods so the feeders remained intact. After all of this excitement, I was now wide awake. I quietly closed the bedroom door so as not to disturb Dick who peacefully slumbered through it all. I crawled into bed in an adjacent bedroom to read a bit. I grabbed the nearest book that lay on the bedside table and flipped the switch on my flashlight. The title of the book was Don't Sweat the Small Stuff. Was that perfect or what???! After losing Phoebe to a skunk, then the big hunt which ended in the demise of two skunks, and the power outage and raccoon in my birdfeeders last night... Oh, and the two woodchucks that dug a hole under my garden fence... The book reminded me that "So many people spend so much of their life energy sweating the small stuff that they completely lose touch with the magic and beauty of life." As I walked out the door early this morning to let my chickens out of their coop, there was the most beautiful rainbow in the sky directly in front of me. My night of disrupted sleep was not wasted. God used it to gently guide me back to a place of inner peace and contentment. He reminded me that it really is just small stuff.