I am looking at my journal page from the fifth day of the retreat. It has a large brown owl drawn in the center. Owls have been coming up a lot. Amber’s mug had owl eyes and a beak. It might be the sixth time an owl arrived in my awareness in the last couple of weeks. Listening.
Emergence. Grace. Release. Forgive. The bold words frame the page. Trust. Trust is the theme. Trust is in thick capital letters.
Trust feels hard. Trust feels like ignoring the obvious. Trust requires a form of navigating the physical world and circumventing the obvious. My brother’s MS. Several people around me with Fibromyalgia. DeeDee’s foot pain. A few of my friends in mental chemistry imbalances. The woman for whom I held the elevator at the doctor’s office, thanking me between gasps of pain. Trust.
Trust that these things are right. Divorce. Hurricanes. Civil unrest. Trust.
We were asked to journal the reasons that we know that we can trust, where we have seen God unfold. I think of the miraculous display of love that came from Mom’s death. I notice how the timing of my divorce created magnificent gifts for the young people around me, and the play out of Nyasha and Shante’s college journeys hinged on it.
I see the babies born to the young ones around me. I see the cycles of nature, the yard, the forest, the creek at McCollum park drying and filling in the seasons.
I am so aware of the timing of my journey with cancer secretly aligning with the sale of the Granite Falls house. My move to Dad’s was a move to being nurtured. Cared for. Surrounded. I am not isolated in illness. Trust.
Trusting in the Divine is like shifting perception, seeing that the journey is not meant to be “pleasant”. There is a roller coaster effect. We can trust. We can trust that there will be pauses. Up at the top, the coaster car pauses, and we catch our breath and look at the beauty of the landscape, feel the sun on our skin. Then we start down another killer hill, screaming the whole way. But we can trust that there will be another lull. Another chance to catch our breath.
Chemotherapy is another screaming, down hill rush. I trust in the human cycle, the ebb and flow. And I trust in the Eternal cycle. Eventually the ride ends in great glory. I trust that what may appear as death actually divulges that I am off the ride, at home with grace and emergence. Human trust shifts perception. Spiritual trust lands us in Eternal rapture.
micheleplumbstowell.org 
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