windflowers

in waiting

Hello friends,

I’ve been knee-deep in opaque waters, and, true to my usual style, I’m moving forward fueled by belief and bold steps, only to second-guess my footing the moment I make them.

I came into the world this way, if you can believe that. My mom tells the story, “You decided to come two weeks early and then, at the last minute, changed your mind and got stuck on the way out.” A while back, I mused with a friend about how our initial arrival can be indicative of how we move through life as we grow up. At least, it’s a notion that has been consistent with my pattern. Try it—it’s a fun contemplation.

While clarity is beginning to take shape, and I do feel as though I’m entering an exciting new chapter, I’m also having to work to stay grounded in the present versus getting caught up in the potential of what’s to come.

Thankfully, I have a rock-solid support system and a few strong examples of people who actively choose unwavering trust in the midst of uncertainty. They are reminders that, even when things don’t pan out as planned, there is always a greater purpose at work behind the scenes.

When I look back at the fork-in-the-road moments of my life, there’s a clear distinction between when I chose to let life lead, and when I chose to try to force or manipulate what I thought I wanted. While both were fruitful, I’m sure you can guess which avenue unfolded with quite a bit more harmony and grace.

This tendency ‘to push’ shows up in subtle ways and is reinforced by modern life’s fixation on productivity over presence. A long-engrained habit of mine is to treat everything as if it’s a task to be checked off rather than as fleeting moments of my life asking to be experienced.

Even as I’ve sat to write this newsletter, I’ve noticed myself try to force my way at multiple points by trying to complete it in one fell swoop. This habit has softened with awareness, practice, and time so that I can now listen more closely. My body has beckoned me at multiple points to get up, go for a walk, have a little lunch, and make some tea. Each time I’ve stepped away, when I sit back down, a sentence that I had been trying to force now quietly makes itself known.

It’s easier to surrender to the process of writing a newsletter than to the larger themes of life, but the impact of these smaller practices help to keep that faith in the bigger picture.

My favorite day this week was choosing a few flowers for our back patio (everything pictured here). At the nursery, one flower stood out above the rest— this Marianne Blue Anemone. When I got home, I looked up the common associations to the flower, and I read that it’s a symbol of ‘anticipation.’ Because they close up at night or during cloudy weather, they symbolize the feeling of waiting, like something is about to happen.

I laughed at nature’s timely message and said a little prayer as I uncoiled the roots so that they could stretch out in their new home—

To be more firmly planted in the waiting.

Gently Downstream,
Kara