Knots

Hello beautiful people and welcome to your weekly dose of Celestial Goodness. Well intended to be weekly, but alas, the last month has been one for the books. I think I have been through every emotion possible—we had a death in the family of a dear relative in Jamaica. Often I find myself looking through the window and thinking about her life. She always encouraged me to be my best, and for that I will always be grateful. I have also been moving—physical moving from the place where I spent most of the pandemic, and from my home that I have known for many years. I learn a lot whenever my life has a transition point, and this time around is no different. As my newest life chapter unfolds, I am looking forward to sharing lessons that I learned in this space with all of you. So, as always and even more than before, thank you for joining me in this space and on this journey. I appreciate your time and your presence.

So knots. If you are like me, you’ve encountered at least one in your life, whether literally or figuratively. When I started writing this up, I initially said that I wouldn’t say consider myself an expert in untangling knots but that after some reflection on some of the situations that I have been in my life, I am at a minimum above average in untangling a mess. Haha. You can see this week’s video here: https://youtu.be/M4wiLMcACPE

Recently, I had to sit and untangle some of my jewelry. I have no clue how jewelry manages to tangle up. It’s almost like the pieces come alive and say “hey do you want to tango with me,” and in the middle of steamy jewelry tango they get so entangled that it seems impossible to untangle them. In this case, I had gotten lazy to pack a handful of jewelry for travel in the way that I normally pack them. I have a travel pill container and instead of pills, I put each necklace or ring in its own little pod. This usually means that nothing gets tangled. It’s brilliant. Of course did I do that? No, absolutely not, that would have been too easy—that would have been too much like right.

So yea, I hadn’t done that. Instead, I just threw all of the jewelry into a little bag together and kept it moving. So much to my chagrin—when I was ready to wear them, they were tangled up in knotty bliss. I ended up finding two necklaces and two brackets tangled together in an impossible knot. My first thought was one of despair. How did this happen? Should I blame the jewelry for being naughty? No, in reality it was my own fault. Maybe I should cut the necklace? Or one of the bracelets. Well that wasn’t practical. I actually got the scissors to try and cut one of the bracelets—but I saw that embroiling the scissors would leave it’s sharp edges jagged.

There is a lesson here. If you are like the scissors—you come to realize in life that even if you seemly have the ability to cut away another persons problems that sometimes you entangling yourself only serves to cause you harm. Sometimes you need to stay out of another’s entanglement. Sometimes you have to let what’s unfolding in another’s life play out so that they can learn the lessons that they need to. Back to the knot—also a product of my own creation. Like some of our life problems are, right? I saw the red flags. I knew that if I put these jewelry together this could happen, and it did. Sometimes we see the red flags and yet we continue on with something. But again, back to the knot. I sighed and looked at the knot deeply. Where do you even begin? I looked at each part of the knot and then began to see where things could be loosened. Once I did that I was able to follow the end of one necklace and focus on that part. Sometimes we have to give a problem our intense and intentional focus. I worked on one section at a time. Slowly, mumbling to myself at first, but then I zoned into the task at hand.

What did I learn? Sometimes to clear a knot you have to let go. Yes letting certain parts of the mess fall naturally showed where things had slack—these were areas begging to be loosened and the areas that were the most easy to resolve. At other places I needed to tighten the area. In all stages of this I had to be patient. The problem with this knot was that it was multiple smaller knots that added up to the larger knot. Taking care of small problems before they become too big can actually help to prevent problems from getting worse.

There was also a major lesson in patience for me. The minute that I thought I was close to untangling my mess and got impatient I made another knot. Frustration begats frustration. If you need to walk away and come back to the issue, sometimes that is what you need to do. Apply this to relationships and to any situation in your life. A cool head can prevent many a crazy situation from escalating. Patient application, learning by trying—seeing what worked and what did not and then having the willingness to try new solutions helped immensely. As I sat doing this I realized that life operates in a similar fashion. We might find ourselves entangled in some knotty mess. Maybe it’s because we were negligent on something or maybe we chose to ignore the red flags that this the situation could unfold in the way it did. Sometimes we just find ourselves in the middle of something. In the time that I have been alive I learned that many problems are solvable—someone I heard once said “everything is figureoutable.” I agree—with effort and patience we can figure things out. If you find that one thing doesn’t work don’t be afraid to try something else.

Eventually you will free the knot and hopefully learn a good lesson in the process.

And yes, sometimes the lesson is that some things you have to let go. There is courage in that. I hope that if you have a problem this week that you are able to find the best solution for you and for your life. May the stars shine brightly over your week and May it be a beautiful week indeed! And if you are liking these blog posts and videos, please do subscribe, like, share, and leave comments. I would love to hear from you. Thank you!