If someone had told me three years ago how the coming years would look, their forecast would have sounded something like this:
You will search for a new home, pack, move and unpack four times and in three states.
You will complete training as a holistic health counselor and graduate from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition.
Running will be out of the question because you will be diagnosed with gout and the bones in the balls of both feet will fracture. After you heal, you will immerse yourself in yoga. Devotion to your practice will positively and powerfully alter your life forever.
Your hormones and digestive health will be severely compromised, however a complete recovery is certain with intense physical, emotional and spiritual cleansing.
Your kitchen will be converted to a lab and studio. Countless hours will be spent there filming online cooking lessons and testing recipes. You will write and publish two cookbooks, each about 200 pages.
You will support two private chef and six wellness-coaching clients.
A team of entrepreneurs will engage you to develop the menu for and launch their pre-packaged meal delivery service. The founder of a juice bar chain will hire you to develop a fresh-pressed juice menu and train their staff.
New friendships will develop and others will fade.
You will begin writing two more books and enroll in yoga teacher training.
You will develop plans for a nourishing restaurant of your own.
Your marriage will dissolve and you will get divorced.
After hearing such a report, I likely would have told them they’re nuts. Yet since spring of 2010 this has been my journey.
In my journal recently, I sketched a diagram of the past three years. Wanting to see how it all tied together, I drew boxes to represent pinnacle moments in time. Connected by a single line, each box was either linked to a location, relationship, project, or opportunity.
When finished, I gazed down and smiled. It was a colorful web of experience. A brilliant snapshot illuminating three years of learning, growth and transformation. Within this picture of my life there isn’t a single box or line I would erase.
As I took it all in, I realized timing is everything. When I looked at the connected events, I began an internal dialogue of, “If I hadn’t been in that certain place, at that certain time to meet that particular person, I wouldn’t have been able to [insert experience].”
My journey led me to be in the right place at the right time…every time. This included the painful challenges. During each struggle I remember thinking this can’t possibly turn out right, yet out of each difficulty, a gift emerged.
Believing time is on our side is difficult because the lens of our lives is too narrowly focused. We see only what is in our direct view, whether trials or bliss. We hold so tightly to the positive experiences for fear we won’t have another just as good and those that are negative we hope will disappear.
With our vision set to the crown of our nose, we miss being exposed to a world of possibility lying in the vastness of our periphery.
Dr. Suess said, “Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory.”
The message I am inspired to share is to accept your journey with grace every step of the way. Don’t wait years to appreciate how your trials became blessings and your joys brought more of the same. Accept each experience as being right on time, all the time, and know you are never too early or too late for each moment of your life.
At every possible moment, turn inward and ask what you can be learning and have gratitude for all things.
