The Gifts that Come with Challenges

It is my experience that every challenge we have comes with gifts embedded in it. This goes all the way from being unable to wear your favorite shoes to the party that night because you stubbed your toe, to receiving a terminal diagnosis.

I am experiencing a small challenge that is bearing big gifts. I have had a grinchy knee since I stepped off the curb wrong in December. One doctor said I needed a total knee replacement and the other said no. I am doing everything I can to keep out of major surgery.

Of course, for a while, I couldn’t do my daily walks in the woods, which I find so nourishing – the smells, the sounds, the variety of colors, and the animals I know are always there, who I have the wonderful grace to actually see at times. When I could walk again, much to my dismay, I couldn’t walk in the woods because the uneven surface was hard on my knee.

So, I started using an old train track that had been turned into a biking/jogging/walking path and it was flat enough for my knee. I discovered very quickly, much to my joy, that walking this path brought wonderful gifts. Unlike walking in the woods, there were many people I passed moving in the opposite direction. For years, I have loved making eyes/heart connections with the few people I meet in the woods, but now there were lots of them!

I discovered fairly quickly there were generally four types of people I would pass. The first is someone walking, jogging, or riding a bike and I can feel the wall around them that says don’t engage with me. So, with those people I just silently send my heart to them.

The second type is a person who is very caught in their world and when I say hello with my heart, there is a startling moment as they recognize my loving eyes. But very quickly they close themselves off again.

The third type of person, as we walk towards one another, is living from an open heart so that when we see each other’s openness, connecting heart to heart, we both burst forth with a shower of joy.

The fourth, usually children, are people who, when they recognize somebody is really seeing them with their heart, will want to stop and stay in this field of love. I had a wonderful experience the other day. I was walking toward a family whose little girl was way ahead of her parents. As soon as she saw me, a stranger, she turned around and started running back to the safety of her parents.

But I sent my heart to her, and she stopped and turned around. I was now close enough that she could see my loving eyes, so she climbed up on the rail beside the path. As I stood next to her, she just started talking a mile a minute. I did not understand a word she was saying but that didn’t matter. We were just sharing the field of love that is at the heart of life.

Why am I sharing this with you? Because we are living in a time when most people see others as different. This keeps us locked out of our hearts. When you understand, truly understand, each person you meet is a unique and necessary expression of life, and that you have so much in common with them, the differences fade away and you can meet them with your heart.

We all worry, get scared, are ashamed, and feel alone. We all long to be seen, to be loved, to be safe, and happy. And we are all doing the best we know how with the type of body we were given, the type of family we grew up in, and the type of religion we were steeped in when we were young. No matter how vast our differences are, we are really the same in very essential ways.

In this time of great divisiveness, the power of basic human kindness is one of the major things that will heal our world. I invite you to meet the so-called strangers you come across in your daily life with as much heart as you can muster. And when you slip back into the reactive mode, meet yourself with as much kindness as you can muster.

Will you join me in bringing the healing balm of kindness to our world?

If this blog resonated with you and want to explore more of my work, I invite you to listen to my upcoming radio show on Dreamvisions 7 Radio: Your Amazingly Wonderful Beautiful Heart, It will air on Thursday, December 5th at 5am and 5pm HERE. After the 5th, it will be available on demand, along with every other radio show I’ve ever done HERE. Please feel free to explore my catalog and listen to topics that call to you.

Offerings:

TOMORROW! Last chance to join us for the next Free Live Call: Does Pain have to be so Painful? We will be meeting on Tuesday, December 3rd at 5:30 pm PST for an hour and a half. We will continue to meet every two months, so keep an eye out for future events!

We all experience pain.  And we all experience all levels of pain – physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual.

But we are living in an exciting time where we are changing our relationship to pain.  Join Mary in exploring how, rather than resisting the pains in your life, you can befriend them so that you receive the gifts that always come with them.

Don’t forget if you can’t make it on the day, you can still participate by sending your questions and enjoying the recording after the call at your convenience. I hope to see you there!

Click HERE to learn more and register!