Trust the Timing of Things

12/29/20

Dear friend,

A week and a half ago, I woke up and realized I was ready to close down the website for my previous small business, Bookwifery, and email everyone on Bookwifery's newsletter list to share that it had closed its doors in 2020.

Now, this was not "new" news.

I had announced the closing of Bookwifery's doors on Instagram at the end of June. I had also, six months before that, told all of the authors in active status at the time that this change was coming.

Even so, the website stayed open, and people kept finding it and taking the book pregnancy test made available on the site and then joining the email list.

That email list weighed on me. The website weighed on me.

But I couldn't muster what was needed to close it down.

Until December 18, 2020, when I woke up, made the bed, and thought, "Today's the day."

It was time when it was time.

Do you have things like this that happen to you, things that need to happen but just can't seem to be made to happen until they're ready to happen, and then suddenly they are?

This has happened to me a lot.

Here's another way it has looked.

When I was working on one of my master's degrees back near the beginning of our marriage, Kirk noticed I had a pattern. A paper would be due, and I'd be aware of the deadline, and I'd fret about the deadline for days, saying how much I needed to work on the paper to meet the deadline but continued to put it off—until the day I would sit down at the table, put all my thoughts in order, type it out, and turn it in.

And it would be fine. Always finished on time. Always at a level of quality I was happy to have produced.

"This is your process," he informed me at one point, having observed it in action plenty of times by then. "I think you need to trust it."

Instead of fretting so much during all that before-it-got-done time, perhaps I could lean into trusting the timing of things instead. What would change about my interior experience if I did that instead of worrying so much?

So that's what I try to do now (operative word: try!). If it feels like pushing hard against a closed door, I stop pushing and trust the timing. If it feels like scraping against the sides of a dry, dry well, I stop scraping and trust the timing. If it feels like I can't breathe when I try to move forward, I stop moving on it until the breath comes back.

Do you have things like this in your life too? Have you been noticing an inability to move forward on something that seems to be saying "not right now"? How is it for you to pull back and trust the timing of things?

Yours at the speed of soul,
Christianne