"Insights." My coach always calls those times when I have personal discoveries and times of awareness about life issues..."insights." Most of the time when I'm in the throes of my lessons, the words I hear myself use are far more descriptive than..."insights."
Take the other day, for instance. It's become quite clear that one of my many life lessons (coupled with the daily practice of faith) had been dealing with the illusion of lack and all the distractions, pitfalls, pains...lack...that can come with that mindset. I was having an internal "conversation," I'll just call it, about whether or not I could justify spending a few extra dollars on an afternoon with my son - extra dollars that I didn't appear to have if all the bills were going to get paid and the food was going to get bought and yadda, yadda, yadda.
I was in the midst of my..."insight"...when the toilet decides it was going on strike and threatened to overflow rather than flush. I had already worked myself up to the point of panic, and now THIS? Seriously? "Even my toilet is overflowing and ABUNDANT, and I can't even scrape together an extra $15 to have lunch with my kid? You have got to be kidding me!!!" ...is the G-rated version of that episode. So I get the plunger and started working it and... NOTHING. "The toilet is STILL more wealthy than my bank account!!" At this point I'm doing my best to maintain any sense of control over the situation, so I breathe and try again - repositioning the plunger in hopes that this time it'll do it's blasted job. Finally...success! As I stood there admiring the fact that 1) the toilet now appears as empty as my bank account, and 2) I had at least accomplished one thing that day, a Moses Moments happened and I heard, "God is like a plunger."
Excuse me? "God is like a plunger?" I mean, clearly God has a sense of humor - just look around you - but to liken Himself to something that gets s*&t out of a clogged toilet? Really? Well, when you think about it...why not? How many times have we all said or heard, "My life is in the crapper" or "my life is s*&t."? If all of life truly does come down to everything being either of Love or fear, and God is Love, then what better analogy to present Himself to us than as the lowliest of all repair tools - the plunger?
When you have faith that the "Plunger" is going to do what it's designed and promised to do, there really is never a time to fear that the toilet will be clogged forever. Once I got over the shock of calling The Big Guy a toilet tool, I realized that my thoughts of lack had been keeping me from spending time with the people I love and care about most - my children, my family, my friends and yes, even God. Everyone. I would spend all of my waking hours at work and when I wasn't working, I was trying to come up with other ways to generate extra income. And for what? Distance from my family? Missing out on my boys' basketball games - or even a quick lunch? Really? Is a dollar seriously worth never being able to get those moments back? And then I had a Scarlet Moment: "As Plunger as my witness, I will never let the illusion of lack keep me from my children again!!!"
So I cleaned up, got dressed - covering up the plumber's crack, of course - got EXTRA gas and EXTRA pumpkin gelato with my boy, and enjoyed every minute of love I was blessed to share for the rest of the day! And now any time that pesky distraction of lack creeps up, I remember the lessons I learned from my "insight" that day and shout:
"God is the Ultimate Plunger!!!"
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