A week or so ago I dropped a bottle of water, cleaned up the mess without another thought, and then realized how differently I would have responded to that same spill just a few years ago. I patted myself on the back for how far I had come in my healing process and how well I had let go of the old patterns of behavior that would have resulted in negative self talk and negative emotions that most likely would have carried over into the other activities of the day.
On a CD that I was listening to by Louise Hay on one of my trips to Nashville, she mentions that when we work on an issue and finally think we have healed it, we often find ourselves saying or thinking that because it is healed, we are done with it. We will never need to address it again. She then asks, but how do we know it is healed? The only way to know for sure, she says, is for the Universe to provide us with another opportunity to address the issue again and see how we handle it. For it's only in revisiting it in some way that we can truly know if we have healed it.
I thought it made a lot of sense when she said it, and last night I had a chance to experience just such an opportunity. That spilled bottle of water last week really wasn't much of an issue: no broken glass, a small amount of clear water, nothing stained or wet other than the kitchen floor, which cleaned up easily. Of course I handled it well!
Yes, last night, the Universe decided to see just how far my efforts to heal myself had taken me! I went down to the basement and put a load of laundry in the washer, turned it on and went back upstairs. When I heard the last cycle complete, I went downstairs, ready to move the laundry to the dryer. I was greeted with a strong, unpleasant odor and a pool of raw sewage in my basement!
Boy was I surprised! Not pleasantly, of course. No one wants to deal with that stuff. But the bigger surprise for me, and a good one, which I realized after it was all over, was that I handled that stinky, black muck on my basement floor just like I did the puddle of clean water when I dropped that glass bottle on the kitchen floor. I did what I had to do. I moved the laundry to the dryer, cleaned up what I could of the mess on the floor, went upstairs and called the plumber and left a message about what had happened. And then I went back to watching television. No negative self talk, no anger, nothing. I had done what I could do. The rest was up to the plumber when he got here.
I'm not patting myself on the back this time. I've learned my lesson. I don't want the Universe to test me out in even bigger ways right now, although I'm pretty sure bigger hurdles will present themselves at some point. But I do think it's interesting that I was given an opportunity to see what I would do, how I would handle it, if the mess I had to clean up was bigger than just a small spill of clean water. Perhaps it's God's way of showing me that I'm ready to handle bigger things, positive as well as negative.
