When The Unexpected Happens
“David, come—it’s something urgent!”
I am at the woodshed, stacking logs in my wheelbarrow, when I hear Pam calling from the house. I am hurrying, but it’s a long way back. All the mind needs is a few seconds to go a thousand crazy places. The kitchen faucet has broken off and water is gushing everywhere. No, I think. Her loud call was deeply worried, not frantic. One of the kids has been in an accident. Still, I am running. Someone in my family has collapsed in the driveway, but who? Now I can see her standing on the steps, phone in hand. It’s a message. Closer, I see her face, her drooping shoulders.
She reads me the text. A dear friend has suddenly taken ill and is hospitalized. The early stabs at a diagnosis are unclear but troubling. My first words are, “I can’t believe it.” That’s what we say when the unexpected happens. We just assumed it would be as we had always imagined.
The first casualty of a crisis is the assumed timeline of our life, or the life of someone we love. Suddenly, everything that was supposed to happen tomorrow and next month and next year falls apart. The trip to Croatia is off. The concert next Friday—forget it. You always take care of the grandkids on Tuesdays; not now. That’s why they call it shock. All systems have failed. The calendar has crashed. Every little assumption is up for review.
Some crises will always upend our lives, but we can learn, gradually, to make conscious at least some of our unconscious assumptions. We can remind ourselves daily that it’s always better to await God’s plan than to just go on mindlessly with ours.
In the Baptist church of my childhood, people were always saying, “Lord willing.” If they announced a revival for next month, or a ladies’ tea on Saturday afternoon, they’d add, “Lord willing.” It was a common reference to James 4:15, where the apostle counsels against confidently declaring what we intend to do. Instead, he writes, “…You ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.’” Other Christians over the centuries were careful to add Deus volente, “If God wills.” Muslims always say Inshallah. In “Slip Slidin’ Away,” Paul Simon sings:
God only knows
God makes his plan
The information’s unavailable
To the mortal man
When our plans are suddenly tossed into the paper shredder, we’ll always feel that shock and disbelief. But it doesn’t have to go on forever and trap us in fear. We can learn, day by day, to live according to a higher plan—which means dropping some of those assumptions about how our perfect plan is going to roll out, learning how to add to all our future plans that blessed Baptist caveat: Lord willing.
Well said, David!
Thank you, Michael
My wife died six months ago. I still cannot shake grief that is sometimes overwhelming. The day before she died her hospice nurse told me, “It’s not her time yet, she’s not ready to go.” She wasn’t ready and I certainly wasn’t but our times are not in our hands, they are in God’s as Nancy always was and surely is now.
I’m so sorry for this tremendous loss Kevin. May God’s peace that passes all understanding be with you and keep you.
Thank you for sharing that personal story with us, Kevin. Your loss is incalculable—and we are all blessed to hear your affirmation of faith, that our times are in God’s hands.
David, We lost our amazing 14 year old grand nephew, John Hughan, over the Labor Day weekend on the Cape in a terrible accident. Life has been on hold for a couple of weeks, but slowly we are trying to take up our routines and find the light in the present day. Thank you for this beautiful piece; I have forwarded it to loved ones and it is a source of comfort. Love to you and Pam.
That’s so hard to hear—a beautiful and vibrant 14 year old. Blessings as you grieve and heal.
“May God’s peace that passes all understanding” – you wrote this to Kevin and when I hear of a 14 yr old’s tragic death or a child stricken with cancer before life has really begun I used to say no way is there a God. I have to use your line “God’s peace that passes all understanding” on a very regular basis….I can only believe there must be a reason that is beyond me. Kevin and Karen, so sorry for your loss.
That was Karen who offered that prayer for Kevin in her reply. But I’ve often relied on those words, when no other words will make any sense.
So many things came to mind as I read your story David. It was the last thing I read before going to bed last night. Reading it was like climbing a tree with a multitude of branches but what branch to explore was my quandary. But quandaries are no problem for me (nothing to get hung up about) as I just give them over to Holy Spirit knowing HS will guide me on how to proceed.
This morning in that place where awakening and dreaming overlap it was your story that was front and center for me to ponder. In this space I was given the opportunity to explore many branches with each branch explored begetting many others. From those numerous explorations there is much I could address but the one from the many that became dominant was this one (it begins with a quote):
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” ~ Victor E. Frankl
The “space” between stimulus and response is for the most part nonexistent in humans. A person has to consciously work to train their mind to make that space that Victor is speaking of. This is easier said than done (I have not been able to do it). Stimulus/response is the default, automatic thought system that humans use. And it’s not just a one – two punch sort of thing. Instead, it’s a continuous series of stimulus>response>stimulus>response>stimulus>response…with each response being the stimulus for the next response. This stimulus/response system of thought is based in fear. And at it’s core, what is fear about? It’s about loss and loss is interpreted by this thought system as being contra-survival.
When Pam says, “David, come – it’s something urgent!” (the stimulus) activates a string of fearful scenarios (the response). If you examine each scenario provided by the system you’ll notice that they all have to do with the loss of something or someone. Something or someone that you consider to be valuable. The “something” could be the loss of an extant condition or state of being e.g., broken water pipes being the loss of water pipes working perfectly.
While I, as of yet, have not been able to train my mind to make a space between stimulus and response, I have had success with at least training it to make a space between response and stimulus. And in this space I pray. I let the Holy Spirit know that I want to see things differently. I do not want to see things through the lens of fear. I ask HS to help me see things differently. And seeing things differently with the HS means seeing things through the lens of Love. My prayer is never not answered.
Fear distorts perception (stuff from the train of wagons being tossed into the grocery cart by the subconscious mind of the myself – referencing my comment added to your last post).Love i s True perception. Love is God’s Plan for Love is the Extension of God.
One other thing I want to mention and it has to do with God’s Plan. To me life in the world of perception is metaphorically speaking tantamount to straddling a conveyor belt that is moving between my legs front to back. The problem I have is that I can never see what’s on the conveyor belt until it is right in front of my feet. I do not have a choice for what’s on the conveyor belt (that’s up to God) but I do have the freedom to chose how I respond to what’s on the conveyor belt. Fortunately, there are only one of two ways I can chose to respond (never a bit of both). I can respond either with fear (the human automatic, default thought system) or with Love. And what I have learned is that choosing to respond with Love is not yet an automatic response (the default remains to be the default) response for me. I am having to work at training my mind to be aware that I have another choice other than the default and it is through my desire, intention and willingness to see things differently that I have made a space in my mind between response and stimulus.
I have more but I’m going to shut up now. Thank you David for all the prompts that your posts activate. They’re very much appreciated!
Thanks, Monte—a friend of mine, Caroline Oakes, wrote a great book called “Practice the Pause.” It relies on brain science to demonstrate that if we can pause—as you say—between stimulus and response, we are actually creating new neural pathways that don’t just go immediately to our reptilian brain stem. That, as you say, is what prayer really is—just pausing to let the HS open another pathway than the one we tend to choose.
David, I do recall that some time ago a post you made focused on the “pause” that your friend, Caroline Oakes, had written about. If I remember correctly my comment on that post included the same quote from Victor Frankl that I included here.
Interestingly, but not surprisingly, about thirty minutes or so after I had composed and posted my comment, the unexpected happened. And instantly the default thought system of fear was the response. (Note: I refer to this thought system as being the ego, which I don’t consider as being an entity but a fabrication) Fortunately, the pause came next and not the stimulus. In that pause I turned the seemingly dire situation over to HS and in doing so I knew for certain that the outcome would be the outcome that was intended to be i.e., God’s Plan. Even though the circumstances in my environment were appearing to get markedly chaotic, I was able to Be in a state of peace.
David, I have this mental image that I keep on the desktop of my mind. The image is an expansive pile of rocks composed of an incredible diversity of all shapes, sizes and kinds of rocks. In my mind I traverse this pile picking up one rock then another that happens to catch my attention. If my curiosity about a certain rock that I’ve focused on evolves into being an affinity I hold onto that rock. Otherwise, after thoroughly examining it, I set it back on to the pile. Most of the time when I pick up rocks from this pile the pile itself remains stable. However, every now and then I will pick up a particular rock and almost instantly the entire pile (every single rock in the pile) shifts its position in the pile to some degree. More often than not I don’t recognize this has happened until later, sometimes much later.
The “unexpected” that happened the other day soon after I had added my comment to this post of yours, that seemed to originate from an external source, caused many rocks on the pile to suddenly shift their position. And the ego was right there to interpret the occurrence with an avalanche of fearful scenarios. Thankfully, the space/pause that came immediately after the response not only kept all those fearful scenarios at bay, it completely diffused them.
In our journey through illusory space and time there is absolutely nothing that is random. Consequently, one cannot help but be at the right place at the right time. Nothing is ever done to us because everything is done for us. There is no other plan but God’s.