Three Stories
1. Recently I was driving from the desert back to my home. Inside my desert cottage, a patio door separates two rooms.
Usually I keep that door shut but I decided to close it.Then I got in the car and realized I’d forgotten something inside the house.I was hurried. I wanted to leave after traffic rush but before the highways closed for nighttime repairs. I ran back into the house – smack into the closed patio doors so clean I couldn’t even see them. I knew I’d hurt myself; it was the kind of trauma you know will have an impact.After getting home, I began looking for a doctor to correctly diagnose and solve the problems my incident created. Two of my doctors had died in the past several years. Finding a new doctor, a good one, isn’t easy. I started asking for referrals from people – including the doctor I had but whose specialty wasn’t fixing someone who ran into doors.I got nowhere fast. Each appointment took an entire day. Either I didn’t trust the doctor or I knew immediately that his diagnosis was incorrect. My physical situation worsened the longer this fruitless search lasted. I worried. I felt alone. I worried more. I did not know how to solve this problem and couldn’t get any answers, no matter who I asked.During this time, I went to consult another doctor for another issue I had. While I was in his reception area, I visited with one of his employees. She began telling me about a consultant from another county that came into this office but only on Fridays. As it worked out, he was an expert in the field that I needed an expert in and it was also Friday. He found time to meet with me that day.Problem solved.All that worrying and the answer had been planned. What a waste of energy, I thought. More than that, I felt cared about and guided — touched by my Higher Power.
2. A few weeks later, I decided it was time to look at my goals and set some new ones.
Goals bring energy into my life. They help me co-create it.Silly, but one thing I put on the list was I wanted to see the Rolling Stones in concert four more times during my life. Less than a week later, they announced their upcoming tour. I have two tickets, fourth row seats, for May 20th, six days before my birthday.Coincidence? Maybe. Whatever it was or is, it made me feel good. Happy.
3. Probably from the series of surgeries I’ve been through. Or maybe it was the embezzlement.
Or it could be one of the other struggles I’m going through but I began suffering from a deep, embedded feeling of being unloved and uncared for – by anyone.I know I’m connected to every sentient being. That’s one thing. Feeling loved by any human being, especially a Mother or Father is another. The broken circle with my mother had been healed a few moments before her death. But I missed having been loved. I wondered what it would have felt like, how it might have changed my life and some of my experiences.Both my parents have passed so chances were minimal that they’d tell me now if they had moments of caring for or loving me.Shortly after being overwhelmed by this – and please, I don’t want to call it self-pity — someone on one of my sites asked if they could send me a personal e-mail. I don’t often give out my personal address; it’s all I can do to keep up with my forums and e-mails now. But I said yes.The woman wrote and told me that she had met my father before his death. She said he went on and on about how much he loved me and how proud he was of me – two things he’d never told me while he was alive.In Lessons of Love, the book about my son, Shane’s, death, I wrote about how when I was young – two or three – my father took me to bars with him. He was a musician. He’d play the piano and I’d dance for him and others.“She learned to dance for herself,” he told this woman. “That’s an accomplishment.”Even though we may know that our HP is real, it can become easy to start thinking that He (or She) forgot our name or address ormaybe we’ve done something wrong, something that put distance between us.It’s okay to feel however we feel. Not just okay, but essential. It’s important to accept our emotions so they don’t fester and harm our lives. But if I ever get the blues again, begin wondering if my Higher Power knows where I live or remembers my name, I give you permission to either hose me down with cold water, accuse me of having short-term memory loss, or give me a raspberry award.
We’re guided. Led. On time. We can worry, but we don’t have to. We’re right where we’re meant to be.
From the Desk of Melody Beattie
