Cinderalla had Glass Slippers. I've A Wicker Dresser - The Dynamics of Good Will

Earlier today, I left Gil's office. Gil is my acupuncturist, a dear young man who only has to check the pulse on my wrist to tell me things about my physical, emotional and soul self that I think no one knows but me. Gil gently smiles, at times slightly tilting his head with an even slighter frown, and shares what he feels in my energetic pulse. There is comfort in hearing aloud what inside I know.

I had not seen Gil for several weeks until last week's rains. No, I did not see him because I had been directly traumatized by the rains. I saw Gil because my body physically responded to everything. Suddenly my shoulders and back were like rock and my neck was in pain. I was so energetically depleted at times that I could hardly get out of bed. Even the guilty voice inside my head could barely whisper that I should be out lifting loads, passing out food or tearing out drywall. My body called a halt to much of my doing. I was forced to be. I prayed, meditated, sent love to strangers and animals. I called to check on those who crossed my mind and I was blessedly forced to take care of me.

My chiropractor saw me not once but twice. A massage therapist who I synchronistically met pummeled me brutally but lovingly and I saw Gil and did so again this week. (I never care for my body to this degree. There's always an energetic excuse. Not enough money or time are always the top two and that must change because I've come to realize in a deeper way that the way we care for ourselves often mirrors our care for Mother Earth, but that's another story.)

Today as I left Gil's office my phone rang. Judy my neighbor had found a white wicker dresser. For nearly two years, I have been looking for a used white wicker dresser with six drawers. Judy has done all the seeking. My neighbor and personal shopper has regularly scoured yard and estate sales and the newspapers looking for that dresser. There have been a couple of near finds but the price or height have kept me from committing. Judy has kept looking.

Today Judy tells me Good Will may have the dresser I'm seeking. I thank her and tell her I'll look another day. She persists and calls back. In minutes I am driving to Good Will with Judy to look at a dresser something that once upon a time I really wanted. Yet this day I don't quite have the word for what I feel. How can I want a piece of furniture when in the flood so many have lost so much? How can I be potentially happy when so many are so, so sad? I think of the verse: "Ask and you shall receive" as well as the energetic dynamics of intention. How can a power Divine busy his or herself with me and a dresser when there are so many more important needs?

Yet I am happy because I know to resist looking at this dresser blocks something important. I am quietly, excitedly thinking this may be 'the one.'

As we navigate side streets, Judy tells me the dresser isn't in the best of conditions. I lower my expectations, but walk in and for fifty dollars find the dresser I've been seeking waiting there as if to say, "What took you so long? Cinderella got her shoes. You've got me."

If Gil had been checking my pulse at the time, he would have felt my joy. He would I suspect have said, 'Your heart is strong" for I was happy. Yes, I bought the dresser but more importantly I was happy because my open heart accepted a gift for which I had been asking.

When the heart is strong and I don't mean strong as in controlled and hard, but strong as in alive, awake and real, we can accept whatever comes our way even a wicker dresser for which previously I would have felt guilty accepting as others suffered.

This is why I had to go to Good Will. To not do so, would block my heart's energetic capacity to receive good will. To not do so, would have stopped a cycle set in motion nearly two years ago, a cycle of which a stranger of good will passed something on which was discovered by my neighbor of good will. I now set a new cycle in motion as I in good will pass this story on to you in the internet ethers.

I am reminded of my friend Diana saying, "I say 'yes' to everything I think of. I don't do everything. But I say 'yes,' because someone in that moment may need the energy of my 'yes'."

So I joyfully say 'yes' to this dresser and all it represents because my receiving completes a cycle. I joyfully say 'yes' and accept this dresser because I feel its rightness in my heart, soul and mind. I joyfully accept this dresser (it's beginning to sound like we're getting married) because there is reciprocity in the Universe and I know my joy will be felt streets and zip codes away by someone who in this moment is feeling sorrow. And joy and acceptance are vital in the midst of loss and deep levels of change.

Later I will joyfully haul this dresser home in a truck even as other Tennesseans have their lives rearranged and their things hauled away for my joyful "yes" will ease the rearranging of their lives as they make space for the uncertainty of what's next.

This story could go on and does as I smile realizing the local Good Will evidenced repeatedly throughout Middle Tennessee these days raises the energetic Good Will around the world for we are all connected.

Even now your joy, your heart's smile touches hearts miles away. We are in this together, this beautiful experience called life. May we all in our hearts say, "Yes" to Good Will.

-Let's Imagine that Shift! Dawn 5/13/2010
dawn@imaginetheshift.com