See Every Event as an Opportunity

This morning I enjoyed listening to Linda Beushaushen Gunter’s sermon, “Life’s Story.” She told the first “version” of her life and then, reporting on the exact same history, another “version.” The first story focused through the lens of things being unfair, difficult, painful. The second told of the same events, but without all of the doom and gloom and blame and shame. She told of having been the eldest child; her mother’s depression; her divorce; her widowhood…. each was seen as rife with opportunity and blessing, shaping her into the servant leader she is today. Her closing quotation from The Tiny Buddha was not attributed to anyone, so we can each make it our own,if we choose:

In this life we are all just walking up the mountain, and we can sing as we climb or we can complain about our sore feet. Whichever we choose, we still gotta do the hike. I decided a long time ago singing made a lot more sense.

Yesterday while I was out on a bike ride I received this email message from a dear friend, a loyal reader of Yellow Brick Road. She is someone I have shared a lot about life with.

I’m trying to get to a good place about all of this, so I again send you my gratitude for all of your election-related YBR posts. Thanks to you, I don’t feel like a loser, but I fear that our beloved country will become one if the Democrats win in the Senate too, allowing what I view as impractical concepts to become the norm. Chuck Schumer announced that Joe Biden will help the US change the world! I’m not ready for that. However, as much as Trump or Biden want/wanted to believe that were/are/will be in charge, I’m comforted that God is our ultimate leader, yes?

I thought of this friend as I listened to Linda’s sermon, and also when I read Neale Donald Walsch’s daily thought.

If you were thinking rightly you could not possibly
imagine that anything was going ‘wrong.’ You would
know that nothing in the Universe is working against
you. By definition, given Who You Are, this is impossible.

Move, then, to gratitude when you encounter your
frustrations. And see every event as an Opportunity.

I posted “Why Cycling Can Make You a Happier Person” on the Imagine Healing Facebook page yesterday before I went on my ride. Truth be told, love of cycling is probably my strongest pull to snow-birding. Cycling is good exercise. It gets me out in nature. To stay safe cycling you really do have to be mindful. From the article:

Within 10 minutes of being on a bike, things that are immediately worrying you – that piece of work you haven’t finished – have been dismissed. Ride for 45 minutes and you hardly know what you were thinking about and then something else drops in – a line from a poem or something your child said.

While cycling yesterday, that happened! Something profound opened up to reveal the structure of the universe. I saw EVERYTHING! And everything is unfolding in divine order.

I sobbed telling my sister, Janis, about my experience, and she kept saying, “You had an epiphany….”

Now the epiphany is similar to the way dream images vanish upon waking where the details are no longer clear but you totally recall having had the experience. The most I can articulate right now is that we are all playing roles, each contributing to the divine unfolding. Some are moving out into the change, some are leaning back to the familiar — together all of it balancing our progression.

I had an epiphany….

I could see with a different understanding the experience I had had in Europe in 2011 where options would close or open depending upon my inner state.

A wave of profound appreciation came over me for my brother-in-law’s having broken the water line installing the new sink in the guest bath. Sure, finding the mold and facing the expense of remediation meant going through all of the frustration, but now John is healthy!

Frances Newton said “I can stand what I know. It’s what I don’t know that frightens me.” Our central nervous systems react poorly in the face of the unknown. Fear of the unknown, often referred to as free-floating anxiety, catches up to us on occasion. But it needn’t. Pompe Strater-Vidal has some great guided meditations you can enroll in for free at Relax Breathe Flow to help you.

We can sing as we climb or we can complain about our sore feet.

The path forward may sometimes be unclear. And it may be messy. But the shared heart is calling, and we have an opportunity to make lasting shifts toward love and justice in our world.

~ Kristi Nelson

Photo of Lake Michigan by Kathy Kreager, used with permission.