My heart is so full tonight.  It was just a really sensational week.  

First, I'm down to my last five days of major construction at the restaurant, and it's all shaping up better than I'd ever imagined.  The barn wood that I retrieved from Minnesota and restored for my posts and beams looks straight out of old-world Oslo. (Pic below).

Second, I got to play an outdoor show in Chicago on Wednesday with my favorite guitar player and friend, Gregg Ostrom. Between the warm crowd and the gorgeous Glessner house courtyard setting, it was every musician's dream gig.

And to top it all off, my son just turned three, and the little super hero-themed party we threw him today made him beam with glee until he fell asleep with a death grip on his new Iron Man and Hulk action figures.

Which got me thinking about superheroes.

As sappy as it sounds, my mother and father were always my superheroes.  Whenever I was in trouble, they swooped in and saved the day.  Peril didn't stand a chance in the face of a parent's love for their only child. 

But after my dad died, my world began to crumble.  No one was going to keep me out of trouble, fix my mistakes, or bail me out of bad decisions.  I was on my own.  And for a long time, I spiraled down into a pretty dark place. Stressed-out and lost, I bought a building in Rockford to rehab into a restaurant, and my lack of experience and finances just made me feel more stressed-out and lost.

And in that darkness, I flipped a switch.

Somewhere in that terrifying place, I stopped waiting for help, and instead, became the person that I wished would swoop in and save the day.  I didn't have an option.  I was either going to flounder, or I was going to be courageous.

(To be honest, I continued to flounder.  But after several months, I made the anticlimactic decision to be brave.)

I think part of what has made me so euphoric this week is knowing that--just five years ago--I was still the kind of person who was waiting to be rescued from crises.  Today, I'm the kind of person who does the rescuing.  I restore old buildings.  I write and perform music.  I mom, for crying out loud.  I fight my own bad guys and keep myself safe from destruction, every day.

We've started calling our son "Super John" to drive home the point that--while superheroes really are amazing when people need help--they aren't so different than you and me (minus the sweet costumes, of course). And they're not always going to be there.  

When help doesn't arrive, we need to summon it from within.

Reader, if you're stressed-out and lost this week, I hope you too can swoop in and rescue yourself.  I'm off to get a little shut-eye before I embark on the big final push at my building. Let's get out there and save our own worlds this week. See you next Sunday. -Super Em