Trust and Timing – Day Twenty Three

Trust and Timing

Last night I almost wrote about ‘timing’ and ‘trust.’ The context out of which that potential topic arose was a recent scenario involving my extended family.

Before I get into the details, it’s only fair to admit to the long-standing and sometimes seemingly never-ending effort it has taken me to trust myself.

Not Trusting Myself? Or Not Trusting Spirit?

Hmm. Even as I write those words, I realize that’s not entirely accurate. It’s not always a case of me not trusting myself, or struggling to trust myself. At least in the context that I’m writing tonight, it’s almost always more a case of not trusting my connection to Spirit. Or, perhaps blasphemously, just basically not trusting Spirit. Period.

Sometimes that lack of trust springs from approaching an issue or situation from an overly intellectual perspective. I think I’ve written about this elsewhere, perhaps on my website, and I know I’ve spoken about it in many retreats and mentorships. It comes up because, well – for a lot of reasons, I guess.

I’m loathe to consider myself a flighty or insubstantial person. I was raised – and Karl and I raised our sons – to value education and pursue life-long cultivation of our minds. My education and career as an attorney is a big part of who I am and how I approach the world. I love a well-researched, logical, and precise argument or exposition. I like things to make sense.

So, when I first started working with the spiritual aspect of life – when I started learning how to take shamanic journeys and allowing myself to see, hear, and otherwise experience other ‘realities’ (and simply giving myself permission to entertain the possibility that other ‘realities’ could actually exist ) – it was a risk. I was entering into territory where I risked ridicule. Disbelief. Doubt.

I’ll write about what it was like for me to first journey another time.

Cultivating Trust in Spirit

For purposes of this post, I want to talk about how I’ve had to cultivate my trust in Spirit/God/Goddess/All That Is/Creator. Whatever you want to call that Source energy from which everything we know comes. I use the word ‘had’ deliberately because without that trust, I am confident I would have mucked up a lot of amazing experiences.

For instance, my niece and nephew endured a terrible tragedy earlier this year. I am at once intimately familiar with their pain and at the same time completely unable to fathom it.

When this tragedy unfolded, I felt a responsibility to be there for them, to provide whatever support or compassion I might uniquely be able to afford them.

But following the initial days, when many gathered and comforted as family and friends do, I got that weird ‘sense’ I’ve come to know – and trust – that is Spirit’s way of telling me what to do. Or not do. As weeks stretched on and I could see and feel the rawness being experienced, I wanted to provide insight. I wanted to do even more than that. I wanted to offer my unique interface with Spirit to ease their sorrow.

But Spirit said, “No.”

This made me uncomfortable, because even though I did reach out sporadically, privately, there was a part of me that sensed that they felt neglected by me. Or abandoned.

And yet, I kept checking in. “Is it time? May I?” And Spirit kept saying gently, “No. Not yet.”

“Trust.”

Trusting Divine Timing

Then just this past weekend, something shifted. I sensed it more and more each day. Both of them, but especially my niece, who I knew was away at a retreat specifically dedicated to their situation, were on my mind and in my heart. Each day, a part of me was sitting with her, just holding her and asking Spirit to heal her great pain.

Quite to my surprise, on Sunday afternoon, I had gone out to pick up a few things at the store. I was literally urged (and there is that trust of which I speak coming through and demanding to be honored) to pull over and send a text to my niece. As it happened, she was a passenger in the car of a fellow retreater, so we were able to have a ‘conversation.’

And the miracle is that I could tell she was ready. The timing was perfect.

Our dialogue continued the next day, as well, and it is hard for me to describe the gratitude I feel at the sense that everything is unfolding more perfectly than I, in my intellectual arrogance or maybe just human, stubborn, desire to help on my terms, when I thought I should, could ever have envisioned.

It’s times like these that I know I am not doing this alone. And wow, am I glad I’m always striving to cultivate that trust.

(T-1088)