It's All Good, If You Let It Be What It Is

    I had a busy day ahead of me last Thursday beginning with an early morning meeting with a mother whose son was going to be suspended and ending with a late night of music and a full day in between. The moment my feet hit the floor I was off and running and then I wasn’t. My normally smooth ride to work came to a grinding halt.
  I was one of a string of early morning commuters on the steep curving on ramp to I20 that came to an abrupt stop in the rain. We didn’t slow down. We stopped. No one was moving period.  It was a little like being stuck on top of a Ferris wheel. None of us were going anywhere soon but the view was pretty if you took the time to notice it.  Five minutes passed, then ten. I called work, texted the teacher next to me so she would open up my classroom and then put on Red Haired Boy by Rani Arbo and Daisy Mayhem. It has some great licks I’ve been trying to learn and I wasn’t going anywhere.
   Twenty minutes passed, I shut the truck off and sat with the window rolled down and watched the rain. Then it hit me, I wasn’t waiting, I wasn’t impatient. I just was. I was calm and peaceful. I was going to be late for my meeting and a math test wasn’t going to get copied but it didn’t matter. They were what would be and this was now and now was the only moment I had. It’s the only moment we ever have but we don’t always take it. We live with one foot in what used to be and one foot in what could be, (but probably won’t be, truth be told,).  I don’t know about you but that generally makes me a little nuts. Ok, a lot nuts, which is why I try to take life one moment at a time, and believe me, try is the operative word in that sentence.  
  Thirty minutes passed when an SUV pulled up along the side of the road and stopped. A young man got out in the rain and started walking up the road. It struck me as a little odd, but what do I know; nothing about him, that much for sure.  I said a quick prayer for his safety and sat, just sat, sat and let peace wash over me.  Ten minutes later traffic started to move again, albeit, at a snail’s pace but moving none the less. I got about a hundred yards down the road when I saw the young man from the SUV walking back to his car. He wasn’t alone. He held the hands of two very young children leaning over them to shield them with his body.  He had a long day ahead of him, mine was nothing in comparison.
   I was late for my meeting, my math test did not get copied and it was all good. It’s always all good if I let it be what it is.




                         


 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Gift of the Ordinary

Image
    The greatest joys are in the small ordinary moments of our lives. It’s watching someone we love sleep, a cup of tea on a cold day, a thick mat when you step out of the shower. I’m finding that it takes courage to live in the fullness of these moments these days. Not because they don’t exist, but because we are bombarded with messages that tell us who we are and what we have is not enough. We are told in a hundred different ways that we don’t measure up, that the world is not safe, and something bad is just around the corner. It’s fear at its most insidious best. And I get it.  I get that we’re afraid, and I understand why. I’m not living under a rock. When I did my 90 Day No Negativity Challenge I learned one thing for sure, it’s either fear or love, baby. Fear is a soul sucking joy stealer that brings out the worst in people. We destroy our bodies and relationships, get into debt up to our eyeballs, and we test our poor children to death.  We finger poi...
Read more

Are You A Tootler?

Image
    Have I mentioned that I love my job? What other job lets you to literally touch the future? Where else do you get to read some  great books that you miss as a grown up? And let’s not forget recess, yeah, let’s hear it for recess. When was the last time you hit the playground? Eight year olds are fun to hang out with. My kids work hard and know how to have fun and they like my music! How cool is that? There are trade offs though.      You know the stocks the Puritans used? I’d bet you a dime and a smile that an eight year old came up with them.   Eight year olds have a very black and white sense of justice which translates into a whole lot of tattling.   They would sell their mother down the river and not blink an eye doing it.   I want to support their developing morality and be a model of that for them but mostly though I want the tattling to just stop ‘cause it is driving me bonkers! That’s the honest truth of it.     Now, ...
Read more

It's a Choice

Image
    Christmas is two days away.   The house is cleaned, decorated and the presents are wrapped. I’ve made brownies, six batches of Heath Bar Crisps, Potato chip cookies and I’m headed out the door to the farmer’s market to pick up the ingredients I need for   Christmas breakfast and Tim’s Ginger Cookies. You can never have too many cookies especially when you eat them with champagne for dinner.   I’m diggin’ myself and lovin’ my life. I am truly blessed.   I’ve always been blessed and deeply loved. It’s always been there even if I’ve haven’t been aware of it.  Keeping free of negativity helps me see the blessings that are in my life and there are more than I can count. Keeping free of negativity is a way of wiping mud from my eyes. It’s amazing how much goodness there is in the world when you can see clearly.      “Negativity is an addiction to the bleak shadow that lingers around every human form ... you can tra...
Read more