In A Night Garden
In my experience Spirit have the most profound ways of helping us to see lessons that we need to see but cannot always find on our own.
For most of my life my Spirit friends have often found the most memorable and obscure ways to make me think, to have to reach out beyond my familiar, my comfortable, my safe. I have not forgotten over the well trodden years of gaining life experience, the many times that I have been required to trust beyond what I thought were my limits, a test of my unwavering knowing that however remote the situation, Spirit have a plan.
I like to think that gratitude is one of my stronger qualities and one I try to inspire in others. Ingrained into my nature since I was a child is an appreciation that every experience in life is given for a good reason and that there is always someone more in need than myself.
But….. just now and then the part of me that is human needs a firm reminder of that.
A Spiritual Reminder
This came on a very wet and rainy Sunday night earlier this year after I had arrived home from taking a service at a Spiritualist Church in Hertfordshire.
The previous week had not been my easiest with a full and bursting schedule, travelling for miles in challenging conditions and I was feeling somewhat weary and unusually a little sorry for myself.
Having set out that evening I quickly ran into gridlocked traffic at road works on the A1 south which was several miles in length. After frantic telephone calls and apologies to the church I arrived 20 minutes before the end of the service. There was no question of turning back before that, I had made a commitment which I never break lightly.
Within an hour, and after tea and cake I was on the return road in torrential rain and more road works and I eventually arrived home much later than expected, tired, frazzled, and wondering if it was time for a change to work for Spirit in an easier way.
It was just before midnight when I pulled my Mini onto the driveway, 7 hours after setting out.
The Cold Long Night Ahead
While settling back in at home an unfamiliar sound from the rear of the house caught my attention and needed investigating and so I stepped outside of the back door in the rain and the darkness, just before the door closed firmly shut behind me.
I stood for a paused moment before realising the reality that it was just after midnight with all of my neighbour’s houses in darkness, locked out of my home with my phone and keys on the other side of the door.
Being resilient and creative as I usually am I tried a manner of ways to open doors and windows with various items from a tool box in the garage without success, and the rain kept pouring down on my thin church dress and already saturated hair.
With my partner not due to arrive home until 5am there seemed only one sensible option as I made my way down to the garage to wait out the next few hours.
Living in the countryside with large barns to the rear of our home the darkness was at it’s very best that night, along with the scuttling of night animals coming out to stalk their prey and rat friends darting to and fro. The rain poured down and down.
As the hours wore on and having lost all sense of time the damp and cold set in. My newly tailored outfit of black plastic bin liners and a coat of bubble wrap from our recent house move helped to stave off hypothermia.
With just a candle in a garden lantern lit by the gas barbeque and perched on the edge of a 2 seat sofa which was ready for charity collection the following day, my sense of gratitude suddenly began to step forward once again.
In this rather desperate situation I had shelter, warmth, and even a bottle of water from the back up fridge humming away next to me.
The silence in the quiet street and across the fields was uninterrupted by my ever busy phone, social media, text and e-mail and although completely physically alone I felt safe and comforted knowing that even in this experience Spirit had given me, the lesson was in a degree of protected comfort but sparse enough to remind me that I had so much to be thankful for.
A Stark Realisation
In a few hours someone who loves me would come home and open the door to a warm house, a hot shower, breakfast and bed – a stark reminder that millions of people never have what should be a simple basic living right and are living permanently in far less conditions than my very worst that night.
It was reinforced to me in that moment that the hours and miles on the road every year are because I have work and a sense of purpose and the road works may have prevented me from danger on another part of the journey.
It also reminded me that whatever challenges life gives, there is something strong and positive that comes from everything if we choose to seize the moment and give it it’s true value.
Thank goodness for my night in the rain, which I hope and feel sure, that is not my last lesson in life.
At 5am I wandered in a sleepless daze out of my place of shelter with hair and makeup like a banshee and wrapped like a standard lamp in transit, where a bewildered man with a magic door key began to ask why as I told him….’Put the kettle on and I’ll tell you all about it…’