Today was an ass kicker sort of a day. The accidentally get your foot stuck in a stirrup and be dragged face down in the horse stall sort of day.
Fears are up, stress is off the charts, and many of us are left feeling as though it’s time to throw in the towel. Life seems devoid of hope and filled with the kind of crap that wakes you up in the middle of the night staring at a ceiling you can’t even see in the dark.
Recently, I found myself sitting in a Catholic church over the weekend for a dear friend’s baby christening. It was the first time I’d set foot in a church in many years. Lucky for me, no ceilings crumbled and no candles flickered as I crossed the church threshold.
Personally, nature is my church. I hear God in the cry of the hawk and let my prayers catch on the wind as I sit on the earth.
Surprisingly, the young priest made me laugh and think in ways long dormant. I sifted through the crap he said about our damnation and instead savored his message on trust as though it were a precious pearl cast upon me from the Divine.
Most of us don’t trust.
We worry.
We plot. We scheme. We plan ahead and strategize.
We do these things because we’ve been taught to take control and make things happen. From an early age taught to plan ahead, get things scheduled, figure it out, and leave nothing to chance. We were taught that chance is the swarthy enemy waiting to sabotage our life.
Yet, when life gets shaky or falls apart, we are being summoned to trust.
We’re called to lay down our planners, set aside our goal lists and for once in our organized, can do, make it happen sort of life – TRUST. Feeling out of control is the foreshadowing appetizer leading us towards this main platter of trust.
It’s not easy to surrender into lack of control when it swirls around us, but the truth is simple. There’s only so much we can do in life.
Over time, there’s no way to sustain the level of energy needed to take care of everything. Eventually, we have to drop one end of the rope and trust that someone or something will take up the slack for us.
Letting go, letting something die and trusting that something else will rebirth is advanced level living. It’s not for the faint of heart.
So, I’m walking my talk- saying my gratitude’s, getting exercise and trusting…..trusting, trusting, trusting.
And I ask you to please let go a little.
Let one hand let go of the unmanageable task of holding your life together, and instead, hold on to your trust.
The crazy-making, control freak, unsustainable life that we’ve all been trying to live, is unlivable.
Hold on to your trust.