Just a couple days ago, I was returning home after visiting my grandma, who lives about six hours from where I do. I had hoped to get an early start because afternoon traffic where I live can be a bit hectic, and I really didn't want to be mixed up in it. However, as I approached the final leg of the trip, it appeared I would be arriving right smack dab in the middle of rush hour.
I called my dad to let him know, since he would be helping me unload something when I got home, and he recommended an alternate route, the one he normally took. I thanked him and told him I would think about that option. What I meant was that I would pray, listen for God's guidance, to see whether that was indeed the best option.
However, despite my best intentions, I never actually made the effort to quiet my thought. And I certainly didn't feel the calm I knew came along with listening for and hearing God's inspiration. Instead, after filling up with gas, I somewhat willfully decided to take my dad's advice and charged ahead into unfamiliar territory, with the GPS as my back-up guide.
At first I wasn't too happy about all the traffic lights--since there would have been basically none on the route I usually took--but the GPS said I'd be getting home a half an hour earlier than I had planned, so I stuck with it. Then, at probably the sixth or seventh red light, as I looked at the GPS, I realized that it wasn't set for daylight savings time...so I would actually be getting home half an hour later than if I had taken the other route.
That's when things got unpleasant. I felt so trapped! I was too far from my normal route for it to make any sense to backtrack. And I had no idea how many more traffic lights I was going to be in for! I blamed myself. I blamed my dad. I blamed my sweet grandma who I just couldn't stand to leave any earlier than I had.
Then I saw a sign for a landmark I normally passed and abruptly decided to head that way. Now, this road was gorgeous--rural and curvy, with all kinds of pretty scenery. Exactly the type I like to drive on. But I was so concerned about making good time, that instead of enjoying it, all I could think about was the guy in front of me driving below the speed limit, and how irritating it was that I never had the opportunity to pass him.
So, because I've made it a practice to recognize these negative types of thought as mistaken views of what's really going on, during this whole time, underneath the loud, irritated thoughts, my heart was quietly reaching out to God, knowing that I didn't have to indulge the negative thoughts. Not only did they make no sense (like blaming my dad because he suggested the route), but, in fact, they actually weren't my thoughts at all, because they were not how God was viewing the situation, and all my thoughts had to come from Him. I recognized this, but I wasn't yet seeing it in my experience.
And that's when Paul Simon started singing.
You know how couples sometimes have a song? Or friends have special songs to commemorate special events? Well, God and I have a song, and it's "Father and Daughter" by Paul Simon. The first words essentially say, if you wake up in the middle of a bad dream, and for a second can't remember where you are. My thought became very quiet. I was humbled. I said aloud, "This is exactly like a bad dream." And I realized that I had forgotten where I was--I was right in God's care, in His presence, because He, Spirit, was everywhere. And for the first time in the experience, I was ready to hear what God had to say, to see the harmony He was seeing. No sooner had my thought changed that way, than I came upon the road I normally took, just from the opposite direction. So from then on, I followed my normal route, and didn't even encounter any back-ups where I had anticipated them--AND I actually arrived home at the same time I'd originally predicted!
It was almost as if the whole unpleasant incident had been erased. In fact, it had--the unpleasant part--but I definitely gained some deeper insights into the way God and man relate to one another:
One was that we always need to follow our spiritual gut, i.e., our spiritual intuition about what's best to do, even in a seemingly non-life-changing event. As I looked back, I realized it had felt right all along to go the normal way. So all along, God was telling me what to do--I just wasn't listening!
Which leads into the next insight--God is always guiding us. The ideas we need--the right thoughts and right feelings, the practical guidance--are always knocking at the door of our thought, so to speak. But if we let the volume of a mental complaint stereo get cranked up too high, we can't hear the knock at the door. I had certainly proven that.
Now, those were both things I'd essentially already known. But the third insight was new to me. As it turned out, I had been thinking that I was responsible for my thought. That it was up to me to make the situation better by listening to God. But God is always in charge. Not only is He our divine Parent, our Father who shelters and cares for us like the dad in the Paul Simon song, but He is divine Love itself. Because Love is perfect, He has already seen to every need we have, meeting it perfectly.
And here's where I'll mention something I didn't earlier. That Paul Simon song was one of 383 songs in a playlist on my iPod, and I had it on shuffle. I had no way of knowing when that song would come up. But it did come up, not just at the moment that I needed it, but at the moment that I was ready to benefit from its message. I didn't do that. God did. So He not only sent me the thought and feeling I needed, but did it in such a way that it broke through the hypnotism of the negative thoughts. They simply evaporated when the sense of God's deep and special love for me came to consciousness. It's something so precious that my words don't really do it justice. But it's something that you and I always have the opportunity to prove.
God, Love, is always in the details of our lives. We are always with Him.
Can any hide himself in secret places that I shall not see him? saith the Lord. Do not I fill heaven and earth? saith the Lord. --Jeremiah 23:24
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