Last Friday, I had the great joy of spending the afternoon with my friend Ella at a local spa. It has been our birthday treat to each other every year since 2021.
As we ate our lunch under a giant sun umbrella near the pool, I described the upcoming surgery that Parker is going to have at the end of the summer. Parker, my youngest, has always been a health fanatic. She is a marathon runner, a healthy eater, and a mindful meditator.
So when her doctor suggested a rather invasive surgery with a six-week recovery period, my mind protested loudly. That can't be right. Surely there has been some mistake. This is Parker we're talking about. The marathon runner. The healthy eater. The meditator. The one who seems to do everything "right."
And beneath all of those thoughts was a deeper protest that felt achingly familiar:
This isn't how the story is supposed to go.
As I mentioned my concerns about what all of this means about Parker, about me, and about Life in general, Ella smiled. She was kind and compassionate, of course, but she also pointed out that, somehow, everything is deeply OK, even with the looming surgery.
Ella didn’t say, everything is going to go my way. Or, everything is going to be easy. But, she said with confidence, everything is deeply OK right now.
Ella took me back to 2018 when her own daughter, one of Parker’s best friends and fellow marathon runner had an unexpected health crisis. Hers was considered life-threatening and required immediate interventions, followed by more than a year of continued care. In the middle of it all, Ella’s mind did the same thing most minds do: This isn’t supposed to happen. Things like this shouldn’t happen to healthy children! Somehow, Life itself has gone off course. This was never part of my plan.
That year-long season was challenging on so many levels for Ella and her entire family. There was a great deal of fear and uncertainty. There were moments that felt touch-and-go.
But what evolved during that season was something beautiful and miraculous.
During her lengthy recovery period, Ella’s daughter realized that something deep and expansive had been revealing itself within her. A passion for service had quietly developed into a true LOVE for helping people. When she regained her full strength, there was a palpable joy and excitement that I had never before seen in her. Ella’s daughter knew what she wanted more than anything: to help people who are lost in suffering. Today, she is working toward that goal with the most heartwarming enthusiasm and passion.
The storm did not break Ella’s daughter—it opened up an entire new realm of possibility within her.
The storm looked objectively awful. It seemed truly out of place and unfair.
But beneath all the labels and judgments, it was simply Life Life-ing.
A storm arising in the middle of a clear blue sky. A hurricane crashing into a pristine, well-cared for beach.
That 2018 storm was trustworthy even when no one could see beyond the storm.
As Ella retold the story of her daughter’s unexpected health challenge, through the lens of a much more expansive perspective, my entire body softened.
Just because my mind cannot see the trustworthiness of a circumstance does not mean it is not trustworthy.
In that moment, I remembered my own favorite question from 2019: What if, beyond the ability of my mind to understand, this experience is in service of me? What if it is in service of my highest good?
Ella and I joked about how there is no actual answer to those questions, but there is a space within us that feels the truth held within them.
So this morning, Parker and I debated timeframes for her surgery, considering the practical logistics of recovery in relation to her upcoming move to Grenada. And through it all, there was a deep river of peace within me that lovingly held the parts of my mind still arguing with how Life should unfold.
In that space of peace, I thought about the way humans tend to separate ourselves from the rest of nature. We all, from time to time, innocently forget that it is ONE seamless flow of energy. One movement of Life, arising, ebbing, flowing, shifting, and morphing. No separation. No hard starts and stops. Nothing—other than our mind’s meaning-making—that actually makes our personal storms any different from the storms passing through the sky.
And when we can settle into that space even for even a moment, our hearts can glimpse a deeper and more stable truth beneath all of the mind’s labels and concepts.
We are not visitors in nature.
We are nature.
And perhaps the same Intelligence that allows hurricanes to reshape coastlines and volcanic ash to rain down onto quaint little villages is also allowing this moment, exactly as it is.
It seems that the gift in all of this is the ever-growing capacity to Trust—to be surrendered, to be held with ease. To listen more from the body, from the heart, rather than from the mind. To remember that the body is our greatest truth-teller. Those amazing nervous systems are always letting us know when we’re lost in the stories of the mind again.
The human mind will most certainly protest when you begin to open your heart to the trustworthiness of Life itself, even during the storms. The mind has to protest. That is its job.
We don’t want to argue with a mind that has hundreds of thousands of years of evolution and evidence on its side. It would be like trying to push back the tide of the Pacific Ocean. It’s exhausting BY DESIGN.
We simply want to remember that the mind is not the enemy. It is not against us when it wakes us up at 3 o’clock in the morning to review every scary thing in the world. And it’s not malfunctioning when it asks “Are you sure you turned the oven off” five hundred times after you’ve left the house.
We don’t want to argue with thoughts and beliefs that are more than a hundred thousand years old, as if we are somehow going to be the one little person to finally convince the mind to change. It’s kind of funny when you consider how often we argue or push back against our mind’s most urgent or desperate stories.
So what can we do as we begin opening to the possibility that even the storms of Life are trustworthy?
We begin with our super power. Noticing.
We NOTICE the way the body feels when the mind is telling a story.
For example, the mind might say something like, “This is so unfair! I shouldn’t be sick right now when I have worked so hard to stay healthy. I’ll probably never get better and the recovery itself will ruin me financially. I am hopeless.”
Just notice. Does this feel urgent or desperate in the body? Does it feel contracted and overwhelming?
If so, then that’s your number one sign that the mind is NOT the place to go for answers, resolution, or peace. This is not the time to argue or search for answers.
It’s the time to simply notice.
“Oh, urgency is here. Fear is here. Overwhelm is here. And I am here with it.”
Full Stop.
It helps break the loop of thought that wants to look outward for solutions, and brings you back into the body.
No arguing. No presenting evidence to the contrary. Just noticing long enough to recognize what is actually happening: A storm is here. And I am here with it.
That is kindness.
Compassion.
Trust.
Love.
Peace.