With Max at his dad’s for the weekend, and Mark training in Arizona, Claire has been rather dismayed that she’s “stuck home with mom.” I know, I’m so awful… the woman who feeds her, nurtures her, reads to her, and takes her all over creation to explore.
So I’ve made an extra effort to take her places while her dad and brother are away. We went to the Science Works museum in Ashland, Oregon. She LOVES this place, and for a small town like Ashland, it’s a great kid’s museum. I consider myself a connoisseur of kid’s museums, having lived and traveled all over the place with my kids.
My favorite is San Jose’s Children’s Discovery Museum, but I’ve only been there when it was crushed and overwhelmed with the and desperate, tired faces of parents on a rainy day a few days after Christmas. I hope to go soon when it is less overwhelmed with people.
So, Sunday was an interesting day. First, Claire was happy (see Exhibit A) to be there. But really odd things were happening. We’d end up at certain exhibits by ourselves, and it was almost as if there was a force outside of us that was doing strange yet meaningful things. A pendulum dropping sand that made an image of a heart. A ball that defied gravity to bop Claire right on the head…. twice. A heart image showing up for a moment in a bubble. Bubbles that would form perfect unmoving spheres for a moment then pop.
After, Claire insisted on going to lunch at Grilla Bites. I tried to encourage her to think of somewhere else because parking can be tricky in that area of downtown Ashland. But she insisted, and I like the restaurant, so we went there. Parking was my concern… and we ended up with a spot directly in front of the restaurant. It’s rare to get a spot in that area of Ashland, even more odd that it was directly in front of the restaurant.
These were small signs, but signs nonetheless. They were reminders that we live in a magical universe, and that if we are open to experience miracles, they show up. The additional message was to move this experience from the bubble of a day at the kid’s museum and begin applying that knowledge elsewhere.
There are things in my external environment that I must deal with. Accounting, bleh, and cleaning, and other people’s issues imposing on my reality. And the message I got loud and clear was that it is all me.
I was reminded of that this morning again when a friend said she wished that someone would do something differently. She wanted to experience support from a partner rather than having to be the supporter.
I thought to myself how I had experienced that same emotion. I experienced it as frustration without ever making it to “what if it could be different.” I finally started realizing that it is all me, my experience is all my own, and if I want something to be different, I need to make that change happen myself.
As I support myself emotionally and spiritually, reconnecting with my own inner connection to All That Is, the support I give myself becomes mirrored by my own experience in my external world.
I have had to make some changes lately in my experience, and part of it was establishment of effective boundaries of what is allowed and acceptable in my reality.
We are not victims to our external world. If something isn’t working the way we like, the first step is moving from anger and frustration into the knowledge that it is all us, that others are playing roles so that we may open to the knowledge that it really is all us.
All the world’s a stage, and we are merely players.
Understanding others’ roles in our lives deflates the emotional charge. It allows us to open and allow them to be who they really are rather than just being a player in our drama. And it allows us to say what if it could be different…. and then begin to create that.
The magical experience I had with Claire this weekend was a small microcosm of magic. What it taught me is that the rest of reality is also a magical place where miracles can happen every day… if only I open to them.
