To the tune of I saw the sign by Ace of Base….
Today’s lesson brought to by my second “near death” experience in the shower/tub.
You may recall a few weeks back that a cabinet fell of my bathroom wall and showered me with breaking glass and debris and turned my writing sanctuary into a post accident trauma scene.
Well I had a similar experience this morning. My wife had installed a shower caddy to hold our ever growing family’s bath time needs. She had also installed the cabinet so she’s beginning to doubt her installation abilities, we don’t want that. Plus this makes for great life lessons.
Any tiny thing can be a profound life lesson if you choose to see it that way.
So this morning as I was filling the bath, not even in it yet, the whole damn supply tree flew at me, two deep bruises and a tiny cut, not to mention a big mess to clean up.
But not nearly as big as helping my kids not worry about me or my giant emotions. That one will take some work.
My first thought “my bathroom is trying to kill me”, or my wife 😉 second thought “what did I do to deserve this, as if today isn’t tough enough already.” I’m preparing for my 4th colonoscopy tomorrow morning. I’ll spare you the gory details, but it isn’t much fun.
As I traveled through those emotionally driven negative thoughts I began to think, if this has happened twice in a short amount and of time what exactly IS the message here.
And a wiser and calmer conclusion appeared:
“When things get too heavy and full they come crashing down.”
We can’t blame the installer here, because in both cases with a large family and a minimal understanding of physics (though our son is working on it), the clear culprit here is over-loading.
The universe always seems to have my back.
Any and all of the problems in my home currently between family members is a crashing down from being over-loaded with something, and then our less than best selves emerge.
We can become heavy with our own thoughts, too many bad ones about our selves and the shelf comes crashing down.
We can become over-whelmed when we don’t make enough time for play along with our responsibilities.
We can become pressurized to the point of bursting when we don’t feel close with others and like we are seen and understood.
The good news ? Wait there is good news?
Yes. It wakes us up to reconfiguring the whole set up. It helps us to examine and reassess the situation. So when we set it back up, we can make adjustments.
Now we will only use the necessary bathroom items on the caddy. Now we can clean up everything and put it back neater than we found out. Figure out what is necessary and what is just junk on there.
Now we can notice when the thing begins to get over-crowded and looks like it’s going to snap. And we can do that for and with each other as well.
As someone who lived much of her life just piling things on herself and believing she could carry it no matter what. This lesson teaches me to pause and be deliberate about my decisions, check in with myself and my family. This heals the impulsivity that was naturally gifted to me by my experiences in childhood.
I learned to run fast, and as I am learning from Madeline L’Engle in her book Walking on Water: reflections on faith and art, and from Pete Walker: Surviving to Thriving, and my vicious bathroom:
I must slow down, stay open, and RE-assess the situation. Simplify rather than complicate my life.
Now after a lifetime of the opposite just how am I supposed to do that? 😉
“Generally what is more important than watertight answers, is learning to ask the right questions.” Madeline L’Engle
❤️