SHOWING UP FOR BLESSINGS

     I cannot plan for the most powerful, moving, and beautiful moments of my life. I just have to show up for them. Anticipating some great event, I have fantasy visions of how I will be touched and inspired by certain happenings. I can see them in my mind; the dance, the mountains in the background, the breeze in the trees. I can imagine them as if they were real, and I feel sure that they will be. And then the event comes and goes and my fantasies remain. There is no breeze at all, the mountains are barely visible in the haze, and the dance gets interrupted. But something far greater has taken place. Unexpected moments have unfolded like flowers rising up to the sun, and their beauty has moved me and surprised me and changed me forever. I stand delighted in the wake of all that has come.
     I am blessed with what I cannot foresee. But understanding this does not stop me from scheming and speculating and orchestrating. I want to think of every possible action I can take to assure the outcome I desire. I try to guarantee magic by fretting and over-thinking and planning details. But the magic comes in spite of me, and from unexpected distances, and sideways. It comes from the least likely source. It whispers or comes banging and rattling. It makes itself known by tightening my chest, the exhilaration of overflowing emotion, tears, laughter, tingling skin. It makes itself known by all of them together or one at a time, by the power surge of love and gratitude and the sheer inexplicable beauty of fragile humanity. It makes itself known by all of the things that move me to the experience of absolute joy.

I show up for life. I open to my blessings and stop trying to manipulate the future. I rejoice in unexpected happenings and all the ways that they make me feel.