Gazing in the Mirror

April 11 - When Being Out of Sync Isn't

There was definitely
a period when I just felt
out of sync with earth.
~ Judd Apatow

If you will only learn
to live in recognition of
this Presence and in
harmony with this law,
then the miracle of life
and love will take place.
~ Ernest Holmes

There was one day that was an odd "out of sync" day. It felt as though everything was out of sync. My husband had been marking trees to determine which ones to log for the vitality of our forest. The weather forecast was so certain for a prolonged wet weather event that the forester was not coming on Wednesday. However the day remained persistently dry. Because we expected the day to be rainy, my husband made an appointment with our financial adviser and we planned that the older boy would go with him to the meeting and my younger son and I would go together to my 4 o'clock yoga class because the yoga studio is just down the road from that meeting location.

We left in plenty of time to do a couple of minor errands in the county seat town that is closest to where we live. My computer was insisting on installing 7 Windows updates but I wanted to shut our whole network down because of the pending storm (which seemed to still be certain just slower at arriving than originally predicted). With no time left I simply shut the power off and ignored the updates. My yoga class and the meeting location were both in a larger town but a different county about 40 miles north of where we live. At my WalMart pharmacy I got trapped in a line that did not move quickly. It was simply bad timing and no way to predict how long it would end up actually taking. Upon leaving the store I scanned the parking lot for my family, who I expected to be waiting for me. I walked back and forth the length of the parking lot in front of the store several times without seeing them. I began to believe that my husband must of grown frustrated at waiting for me because he knew we were due at the meeting and we were running out time to arrive in a timely manner. I thought he must have gone to pick-up the trailer tire in that same town.

But that was not what it turned out to be. I had seen a car way at the back of the parking lot with it's hood up. Of course I never even considered that it might be my family !! But it was. A mouse had appeared on the hood near the windshield. Having experienced more than one unfortunate circumstance of mice/rats chewing up the wires in our vehicles my husband and older son were trying to remove it. They finally gave up after having apparently failed at the task. By now we were actually already late for the meeting and the yoga class but we still needed to pick up a trailer tire at the tire dealer. The tire had been dropped off 2 days earlier – it had been a brand new tire but I had blown a hole in it jumping a granite ledge with our tractor water train during our recent grass wildfire crisis. Though I was feeling some "time" pressure, I tried to surrender to the circumstances and not whine and complain to my husband about it. Even so I did murmur some recognition that we were "late" out loud.

Once we were finally enroute to the larger town, my husband suggested that my youngest son and I NOT go to the 4 o'clock yoga class but go to the 6 o'clock class instead. I resisted and said it didn't matter if we were a bit late but he was unusually insistent that I change my plans. So I just surrendered to that new schedule. My youngest son and I would do the weekly grocery shopping while my husband and the older boy were in the meeting. I was helped by the continuing expectation that the weather was going to turn nasty and I hate loading groceries in the rain. The shopping went surprisingly fast and so I called my husband and said don't walk over to WalMart I will pick you up instead. Just after arriving at the meeting location (which was still ongoing) it began to pour rain and I was happy we had gotten the car loaded with the groceries before the storm actually arrived in it's full fury.

Just in time the meeting ended and we drove over to the yoga studio for the 6 o'clock class but my teacher wasn't there. There was a note on the door that indicated she had to cancel the 4 o'clock class but would be there for the 6 o'clock class. Our banker who attends my yoga class and had been inquiring about my husband recently also arrived and walked over to greet my husband in person. Another student came over to our car and said that she heard from a patient of hers that the yoga instructor had been involved in a car accident the night before. The instructor still had not arrived. We began to wonder when we should give up. Then another student came to the car and said he had just gotten a call from her that indicated she was coming and not too far away now. After my youngest son and I entered the studio for the yoga class, my husband and my older son went to a home improvement store for items he needed.

After yoga we went out to dinner and when we left the restaurant it was still raining. During our drive home we were treated to a magnificent display of lightning that was going off pretty continuously with all types of lighting from the ground up to the cloud cover as well as amazing streaks and branches of light. When we finally arrived back home it was only lightly raining and we got all of the grocery bags onto the back porch and into the house quickly. It was a good thing because another downpour came that wet even the porch in its windblown ferocity. Lightning strikes continued occurring often and I was thankful I had shut down all of our electrically connected electronic assets. This morning Windows applied all of the updates that it had tried to apply the afternoon before. Although the day had felt out of sync, I did mindfully try to simply flow with it and it did turn out that everything was perfect, even when it did not appear to be perfect at all on the surface.

~ perspective

I try to focus on the rightness
of the present moment
even when it doesn't feel right
to my rational mind.
I try to be fully present with
whatever I am doing so that
my experience of Life is likewise –
fully present.
I try to do whatever is wanting
me in the moment rather than
holding rigidly to any previous plan.
Of course there are those things
I have to do from duty, responsibility
or necessity but I try to hold
my need to prioritize those things
lightly with a willingness to adjust,
modify or adapt to whatever
the moment requires of me without
resistance or stress.
I have the feeling that
most anything I do is fun and
valuable in its own right.

#children #computers #finances #forest #logging #mouse #storm #time #weather #yoga