Bridges

I am a total fan of the Universe.  If her team had a jersey, I'd be one of those schmucks wearing one on her game days.  Or even every day, just to show my allegiance.  


My life is a series of near misses and just-barely hits.  But for the seconds it took to get the shoe on, the car backed out of the driveway, that extra-long red light.  Sometimes it all seems like mistakes.  And then I happen upon THE bit I WAS NOT supposed to miss, and I realize the Universe is universally sound in her timing and set rearrangement.  


This morning, the coughing boy who needed a ride to school was just a ploy.  My friend, Missy, and her boy's wrecked bike brakes, and his sudden need for a ride to school?  Well, that was just a ploy, too.  We were supposed to happen upon the same spot at the same time. I needed to hear what she had to say, because, like so many times with her, she was speaking my very thoughts and feelings. 


I really have few people in my life who seem like they are just other parts of me flying free out in the world.  She's one.  Our lives are constantly intermingled.  Being in her presence is really like being alone, but with audible validation of my existence, thoughts, feelings, and ideas. I think she might feel the same.  I'm thankful to have found her.  The again and again and again times that we have found each other. 


I've been waking up at 3:46 every morning.  I can't seem to sleep any longer than this.  I wake up to the same recurring thoughts, mind chatter, feelings.  This morning when I woke up, there was the usual tape playing in the background of my mind, but then a new idea happened in.  I felt it, experienced it more than thought it.  I'd like to think I'm embodying it more than examining it.  


Over the course of my lifetime, I've always had something to hold on to, retreat into, rely on.  Until now.  In the last several months, those people, places, and things that have been my life have slowly and/or suddenly been disappeared.  I've been in a constant state of rearrangement, re-centering, renewing my ideas of self, the world, and her people.  It's been a challenge.  And in this time, I've been aware, more and more, that the process is internal.  There isn't a person, a place, a thing that can or will do it for me.  It's an internal reconnection and resurrection that's taking place.  


This morning I saw it like this:


A bridge.  With missing bits.  Connecting me to myself.  And the same bridge.  With missing bits.  Connecting me to the Universe, God, Creative Spirit (whatever you call it, whatever floats your boat).  And there is NOTHING else.  This journey I'm on is the coming back to Source or the open awareness of Source or the claiming of Source that is in its essence me or It...I'm never quite sure which.  I'm not sure it matters.  

This morning Missy said it this way:  I'm being stripped down.  I am not my marriage.  I am not motherhood.  I am not the success of my career.  I am not my spiritual community.  I'm being stripped down to my essence.  It's a dance with just me and me, a dance with just me and God.  That's it.  


I totally get it.  It's excruciatingly painful to be stripped down in this way.  It's unsettling and frightening to look around and see the unfamiliar landscape of a new (unintended) life.  It's tiring to stay afloat in the shifting current.


And at the end of the day, what else is there to do?


Of course, there are crutches if I'd want them.  There are distractions to be had.  There's drama to create if I'm into that.  I'm aware, however, that doesn't really do anything except delay the inevitable process underway here.  It could serve as a temporary relief or harbor in my storm, but it's not the answer or the way.  I'm clear on that.  


And so today, again, I'm willing to let the Universe guide me in my day, to those places I didn't plan on going, into the person I hadn't really anticipated being.  I'm certain that I will continue to run into just the right people at just the right time.  And I'm certain I'm going to be finding some pennies along the way.