Why everything is always working out

Especially when it's not

I have stopped and started this post for several days now. I wanted it to be an accompaniment to this week’s meditation, ‘Trust the Process.’ I have a lot to say about that, especially after all my years of not trusting any kind of process whatsoever. 

Even though this post is coming out a little sticker than I would like, it’s all good. I just gotta listen to my own voice, literally, and trust-the-process so that the words can flow through me with ease. I am going to trust with all my heart. Big ‘T’ Trust! I am going to Trust so beautifully that this molasses I am sitting in is going to soften and turn to liquid honey. Any moment now the words are just going to pour out of my head and onto the page. They’ll pour out faster than I can type them. That’s what trusting does - it makes the process so much easier. It makes it so much more enjoyable.…

….now, if this process could just pick up the pace a little. This is starting to get frustrating and I’m running out of patience.

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And it went on like that for longer than I care to admit. It didn’t make sense at all. I had the most perfect story to share about Trusting the Process - the story of finding a new home for Ace.

Ace

Ace was my black beauty gentleman, and along with my golden light baby Skye and my big brown mama mare, Jezabelle, the three of them made up the most perfect little herd imaginable. A four-legged holy trinity of sorts. They each had their own distinct personalities, they each carried their own profound wisdom; from the ways that they came into my life and the lessons they had taught me and the messages they had carried for others. From their different ages, right down to their colouring, they each held a separate gift that was an integral part of their inseparable wisdom. They were a unit through and though. Until I went ahead and broke them apart.

It all began with an unfortunate series of health issues, for me and for Ace. In a moment of weakness and mild panic, I made the difficult decision that I would need to find a new home for him. The difficulty of that decision softened ever so slightly when within just a few days I had found the-most-perfect-ever new home for him- all while barely trying!  It had just appeared seemingly out of nowhere. The potential new owner was exactly what I was looking for. Ace was exactly the horse she was looking for. All the boxes were checked. All the stars were aligned. This was totally meant to be. I knew I was doing the right thing by him. Everything was unfolding perfectly.

Until the next day, when everything unfolded into a brick wall; she went with another horse instead.

What happened to perfect? How could something not work out that seemed to be working out so perfectly?? I could hear her voice starting to creep in. I used to think it was my voice until I began the painful process of untangling my selfhood from hers. I knew this wasn't my voice. I knew it was my mother's. I knew I didn't want to believe it anymore. Yet with these current circumstances right in front of me, it was hard not to.

See, things never work out for me. No matter how hard I try, Nothing ever works out.

No! I’m not going to do it. I will not believe it. That’s her belief. It belongs to her. I’ve spent the last 3 years adamantly trying to shed the layers of me that weren't actually me. That were never me. I had banished those words. Yet here they were, again, whispering their drips of poison into my mind.

I would have to dig a little deeper dug into my supply of reprogrammed beliefs.

Things are still working out. I just can't see it yet. 

I returned to the rehoming drawing board and, once again, within days I had found a way-more-perfect-than-what-I-thought-was-perfect new home. It was a thousand times more perfect in so many ways; this time, he’d be just down the road! I could still see him anytime I wanted. You can't get more perfect than that! This was meant to be. I was definitely doing the right thing by him.

See, I am free from those imprisoning words. I am not like her at all. Things do workout if you just keep trusting the process.

With my shaking hands and my aching heart I loaded him onto the trailer. “I'm doing the right thing, I am doing the right thing. He is going to a more perfect than perfect home.” The next few weeks were hard. Looking out and seeing the hole that was once was my perfect little trio. Every time I saw my herd of two I felt the absence of my herd of three. Every time I tried to repeat the words, “I am so grateful for my two beautiful horses,” I would hear the silent grief for my third beautiful horse. 

It’s for the best, it's for the best, I swear it's for the best. So then why does the best feel so bad?

Jezabelle and Skye

I received several updates from his new owner over the next few weeks.

Week 1: Things are going great!

Week 2: Things are going “okay”. 

Week 3: It’s getting a little better.

Week 4: It’s not working out! He had bucked her off. It was over. He’d be coming back as soon as possible.

What happened to even more perfect than perfect? As the trailer pulled into the driveway the following day, that voice returned. This time with its stack of evidence; See, I told you so. Things don't work out! Don’t you get it?? In the end, Nothing. Ever. Works. Out. Ever.

Then it hit me. This had nothing to do with the process of rehoming Ace.

I walked him off the trailer and back into the paddock to be reunited with the other two. There they were, my perfect little trio just as they had always been, as if the last 4 weeks had never happened. A full circle - not a smooth one, not a pretty one, not a pleasant one, but a full circling nonetheless back to where I had started. As if nothing had changed. And yet everything had changed. This process was never about Ace. It was about showing me where I was in my process of freeing myself from the past. It was about shining a light into the dark corners of my programmed beliefs and illuminating where I still needed to let go. It was about digging deeper into my own power to choose my reality, no matter what circumstances presented themselves. It was about embodying the power that we all have to write our own story. Moment by moment, to put new words onto a fresh page and to keep writing, no matter what may have been printed in previous chapters. 

I stood there with my dark horse, stroking his neck while whispering; “you’re back home buddy. Back where you belong. Look how perfectly it all worked out.” It was purely my own voice this time because I meant it. I really believed it, simply because I chose to. Change doesn't just happen when circumstances change. True change happens when things on the outside look exactly the same, yet we choose to look at it differently. True change happens when we are so dissatisfied with the same patterns repeating themselves and the same voices deafening our own that we just stop. Right in that moment, when it doesn’t look how we want it to look and it’s not going the way we want it to go - right there, in the heart of that difficult moment, we just stop and make a different choice. 

The perfect trio

I looked out the next morning. Ace and skye were laying next to each other, side by side, yet facing opposite directions. Ace pointing forward, Skye pointing back, while Jezabelle stood stoic beside them. The Golden Horse of new beginnings, looking back towards the past with new eyes. The Dark Horse of shadows, looking ahead with a new perspective; no longer carrying the burden of the past. The gentle and powerful Guardian, holding space without judgment, without criticism, without expectation that things be any different than how they are in this exact present moment. I received the message loud and clear - Everything worked out perfectly by not working out. It was in the process of things not working out that I was offered the opportunity to release another layer of the stifling belief that things don’t work. I was able to drop the resistance to how things were unfolding just as they were and to see in a new way that things “working out” had nothing to do with the situation outside of me and everything to do with the work that was being done for my highest good within me.

This process runs underneath everything we are doing in our daily lives. It is the process of Being - being exactly where we are. Exactly as we are. Exactly as this moment is, and letting that process shed the layers of that which does not belong to us; pulling us closer and closer to the truth of who we really are. The truth that you are not who you think you are. The truth that you are most certainly not the voices that don't belong to you and the beliefs that were put upon you before you ever had a choice.

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Ace is back. Her voice is gone. Trust continues to grow. I now know why I couldn’t get the story out. When I initially sat down to write it I never could have known that it was still be written while I couldn’t find the words. I never could have known at the beginning of the week that by the end of the week things wouldn’t have worked out at all. That I’d be looking out the window 5 days later, seeing three where there used to be two. “I am so grateful for my three beautiful horses.”

Everything is always working out. Even when - especially when - it feels like it isn’t.

I hope you enjoyed my wobbly process of writing about the bumpy process of Ace leaving only to return. I would love to hear from you in the comments if you’re working through a process that doesn’t feel like it’s working. Please do share!