TITLE: What If the Gift You’ve Been Waiting For Is Already Here?

A friend of mine sent me this Melody Beattie reading from The Language of Letting Go that I’d like to share with you. It’s entitled, Getting Needs Met

Picture yourself walking through a meadow. There is a path opening before you. As you walk, you feel hungry. Look to your left. There’s a fruit tree in full bloom. Pick what you need.

Steps later, you notice you’re thirsty. On your right, there’s a fresh water spring.

When you are tired, a resting place emerges. When you are lonely, a friend appears to walk with you. When you get lost, a teacher with a map appears.

Before long, you notice the flow: need and supply; desire and fulfillment. Maybe, you wonder, Someone gave me the need because Someone planned to fulfill it. Maybe I had to feel the need, so I would notice and accept the gift. Maybe closing my eyes to the desire closes my arms to its fulfillment.

Demand and supply, desire and fulfillment—a continuous cycle, unless we break it. All the necessary supplies have already been planned and provided for this journey.

Today, everything I need shall be supplied to me.

That’s a beautiful reading right? The line that really popped off the page for me was, “Maybe closing my eyes to the desire closes my arms to its fulfillment.”

Sometimes I get so focused on what’s missing, or what someone isn’t giving me, that I temporarily blind myself to what’s already there. It’s like I decide I’ll never get what I long for, so to protect myself, I shut down the wanting altogether. But the truth is, what I convince myself is missing is often right in front of me—it just might not be where I expected to find it.

A good example of my longing-and-not-finding are my relationships with the people close to me who struggle with addiction or mental illness. There have been times when I’ve assumed I was just never going to get a need met because I just keep knocking on the brother-door or the spouse-door or the friend-door thinking that’s the right door. But, no one answered to meet my need. Melody reminds me that the supply and fulfillment is there, I just have to open my eyes and my arms to other possibilities. 

You know that saying, “When God closes a door, He opens a window”? Yeah—sometimes I just forget to look for another way in.

There might not be anything I can do about another person’s turmoil, but there’s always something I can do about getting my own needs met. I just have to spend less time knocking on closed doors and more time looking for the open windows. When I take a step back and look around with clear eyes and open arms, I start to see that there are open windows everywhere—some wide and welcoming, others just cracked enough to let the light in. But they’re there.

And when I stop pounding on locked doors, I can finally hear the breeze calling me toward the fulfillment that’s been there all along.

Next week we’re going to be wrapping up Season 9. TeamConfessioners, can you believe it? I’m also planning on announcing an idea I have in the cooker for Season 10 and a partnership with C2 Care Redefined over the summer. Please pop over to Apple Podcasts and leave that 5-star review to help the show out, and we’ll chat again next week!