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"Los Angeles is flooding. The rain has poured down in buckets, taking out electricity and power along with people&amp;#039;s patience and spirits. Compared to many of you dealing with snow, tornadoes, and massive unemployment, whining about a bit of water seems as ridiculous as movie stars moaning about lack of time to themselves. &amp;quot;Oh, poor baby, don&amp;#039;t let that big bag of money hit you on your way out the studio trailer. Hey, you forgot your designer umbrella!&amp;quot; Then there&amp;#039;s the whole Haiti situation. In an effort to avoid storms and extra calories, I ran on the treadmill, processing the disaster through the clinical filter of a flat screen TV. I watched a man manically digging for his wife . &amp;quot;She&amp;#039;s in there. I know she is,&amp;quot; he insisted to an American rescue worker. &amp;quot;This is where she worked. You&amp;#039;ve got to find her. &amp;quot; A faint voice was heard. It came from a pile of rubble - enough cement chunks to build ten L.A. swimming pools. &amp;quot;I hear her!&amp;quot; The rescue team scurried, sliding a camera deep inside a cavern. Soon on the camera monitor, amidst dust and stone, was a woman&amp;#039;s face. Huge black eyes filled the screen. Amazingly, they were still intact. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re coming for you!&amp;quot; her husband shouted. Thanks to miracles, and a good edit job, the scene soon spliced to her being pulled out of the hole. She was reunited with her husband. Another splice later, the camera followed to them driving away.  A friend of mine described a similar scene she&amp;#039;d watched. She could not get over how a young girl, after being trapped for almost a week, was able to stand up moments after the rescue. &amp;quot;She just brushed that dust right off of her as if to say, &amp;#039;Hmmmph! That was crazy! Well, I&amp;#039;m out now. Time to see family!&amp;#039; &amp;quot; I&amp;#039;m not minimizing what these victims went/are going through. Please help in any way you can. But in addition to your financial support, it&amp;#039;s wise to take a lesson from their endurance and resilience. How often, like the rescue worker&amp;#039;s lense, do we turn a high resolution camera on our spouses in an unforgiving attempt to find flaws? Why are we so loath to shake the dust off of arguments? Why are we so quick to walk away from our marriages as opposed to just walking away from petty fights that mean nothing? I am far from perfect, but this week, I took a lesson from those Haiti survivors. When Rex came home from work one day, cranky and tired, I didn&amp;#039;t go into a diatribe about how my day wasn&amp;#039;t exactly a double cone of joy and leisure with sprinkle of giggle on top. I listened to him unwind about the data center. He then listened to me unload about my bank account. Then we just held each other in silence. (The quiet alone was a miracle!)  With so many people in the world missing homes, families and food, a warm embrace in a clean bed is nothing to take for granted. And rain, that could seem so irritating on a different day, instead acted as a melodic pitter-patter against our window sills: A reminder that we are, indeed, so blessed. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/relationships/a3052/pitter-patter-goes-the-rain-an/?src=shelter_footer>