May 02 2009
Spiritual Saturday - You can’t always get what you want
No you can’t always get what you want
You can’t always get what you want
You can’t always get what you want
But if you try sometimes, you might find
You get what you need
- Rolling Stones
One of the hardest things to come to terms with for most people is that you are not the sole determining factor of your future. Luck, karma, and the whims and desires of the god(s) has a great impact on what happens.
There have been many points in my life where I have been angry, railed against the fates, and just generally felt like my life was going in the opposite direction from where I wanted to be.
When I was pregnant with Little Guy in 2005, Big Guy and I were living in a one bedroom apartment and looking to purchase a house. We looked at easily 50 houses and made offers on a couple of them. But, for one reason or another, the offers we made never went through. I cried. I cursed and raged. I had determined we were doomed to live in abject poverty and misery forever. Hey, I was pregnant and hormonal.
We did eventually get a bigger apartment and, had we bought a house, we would have been one of those families who ended up upside-down on their mortgages and been foreclosed on this year. Did I get what I wanted? Definitely not. But it is an example of life providing what we needed.
A friend of mine told me that I needed to learn to “trust in the timing of things”. And it’s a lesson we all need to learn. The idea of patience and trusting that the world will work things out the way they must be is difficult for me. And even worse is the idea that things will work out in a way I don’t want because it is best for everyone. No one wants to be unhappy or uncomfortable. No one wants to be poor or hungry. But trusting that there is a reason for it, even if you can’t see the whole picture, is a practice that you need to get into.
This is coming to mind now due to Monday’s court date. I have to take a deep breath and let it out slowly and release it to the winds. Whatever happens will happen. I can’t change it anymore than I could stop the sun from rising. I cannot impact the outcome anymore, I have done all I can. Big Guy and I knew we had to make this effort, knowing that we were likely to fail, for the sake of the kids. Now, that’s all over except for the final pieces. And I need to focus on the things that still need my input, like my family and my class. It’s difficult still, but it is what it is.
And know that, while the outcome may not be what we want, it should be what we need.
