Gratitude for Timing...

It has worked for me and it has worked against me.  Yesterday as I prepared the property for the incoming storm, I had just walked inside when it started to rain.  Timing!  

Not everything in my life has gone like that.  Many times, my timing has been off and yesterday would have had a torrential downpour happen just as I was walking out to take care of things.  Yesterday I got lucky.  Or I was more in tune.  Or something.

I have been on the receiving end of fortunate timing a great deal in my life.  Being at just the right place at just the right time.  And I have also, been on the receiving end of a complete shitshow, although most of those occurred because of me and my dysfunction.

One of the things childhood trauma does for you, is it makes you hypervigilant.  You experience seemingly random awfulness from others and so you learn to wait for it. To watch every situation carefully.  To be ready, always, for something or someone to pounce.  And that has actually served me pretty well.  I have “missed” a lot of other trauma because I am mostly on high alert, most of the time.  My nervous system is shot, but I have seen shit coming from miles away and been able to sidestep it.  This is not fool proof, but, it has enabled me to miss a lot of crap that would have hit a lot harder or taken me out completely.

I guess the main thing about timing is that I have come to trust in it.  I don’t like waiting for it.  I am impatient by nature.  I am not happy unless I have something planned and am getting what I want.  I am kind of an asshole like that.  I work on it, but to some degree this is just who I am.  I want what I want, when I want it, and I do not expect you to give it to me.  I will just go get it myself. Thank you very much!

This was much more problematic before I found a spiritual path.  Now I have the capacity to ask and wait.  Sometimes with my fingers drumming on the counter, but I wait nevertheless.

I trust the process of timing and trust, for the most part, that my life goes best when I am not running everything.  I am an active and valued participant in my own life.  But I am capable of putting out there what I want, and then waiting for a response.  And the universe seems to have three possible answers:  Yes, No, Not Now.  I tend to really only value yes without spiritual aid.  I need a fairly well organized spiritual practice to tolerate No and Not Now.

I have come to see that No and Not Now are answers that are worthy of being heeded.  I have learned the value of restraint and pause.  My best and greatest ideas are most often executed after some careful reflection.  In short, the best timing is when I make space for God to enter before I act.  I am still working on this.  I hit send, or purchase still far more often than I should.  But I have gotten better, and then worse in a new area, and then better in that area and then worse in some other area.  I am constantly falling apart and coming back together.

But I have come to trust the timing of my fuckups and my successes. I may want or need an answer now, but if it doesn’t come, I have come to accept that now isn’t the time for that to be answered or perhaps the waiting is required for me to get something that I haven’t quite understood just yet.  I hate the discomfort of waiting, but I have also experienced a great deal of relief when my struggle to wait is handsomely rewarded with insight that whatever it was that I was so sure I wanted, was actually a very hard lesson that because I waited, I was able to side step.

I guess, and I am kind of uncomfortable admitting this, I have come to rely on the divinity that coexists with timing.  If it is Not Now, I find a way to be ok with that. Sometimes I bitch and moan and carry on quite a bit, but in the end, I wait.  I trust.  I prevail.

I have come to believe in a universe where I trust that the forces that be want me to be happy, safe, content, loved, secure, and free.  Sometimes I still struggle with strong feelings of unworthiness that get into my brain and have their way with me.  I think my love life is the best example of this.  I have wanted that one person the whole of my life.  But my impatience and lack of faith that that person actually exists has given me a checkered love life history that is full of false starts and a great deal of disappointment.  So today, I am waiting.  I am trusting the answer isn’t NO, NEVER!  Just Not Now.  And I guess even if it is NO, NEVER, I can find a way to be ok with that.  The peace that I feel in the absence of some reckless and careless man with my heart and soul is greater than my current need to scratch that particular itch.  It may not always be that way, but I am staying the course, for now...

I have not always liked the timing of things but I have come to see that the timing of my life has been pretty epic.  I have had a great deal of success and good fortune.  I have been in the right place for a lot of grace to enter my life.  And I have been given a great deal of perseverance for those harder times when fate and timing have not been in my favor.

Today, I trust that what is meant for me will come, despite of what I think I want.  And this simple fact has saved me from many fates worse than death, innumerable times.

Again, still...

I am grateful for

Being free of the obsession

Early birthday gifts from Leslie

My relationship with my mom

Hopefully having heat today!

Evenings with Grace

Getting everything cleaned up before the rain

The sound of rain 

Freedom

Being able to sit with hard feelings and just let them work themselves out

Thanksgiving just around the corner

A warm, safe place to sleep

Reprieve from dating and that shitshow

Cat Day!