Not Alone by Tara Mohr

This morning when I woke up, my eyes opened to a small ant crawling across the canopy above our bed. I took up watching it. This ant (let’s call him Sam), was regularly buoyed backwards by gusts of the air conditioner, resulting in long circuitous ant journeys. After several minutes Sam crawled just an inch or two from where he was when I opened my eyes.

Journey to More Joy and Freedom

Being me, the woman who cries at commercials even when they are on mute, I found this heart-wrenching, though not excrutiating enough to get out of the warm bed and help Sam out.
Besides, given the shape of the terrain and Sam’s skill, it was not at all inconceivable that he would eventually arrive at the bedpost, his presumed destination. But it was also undeniably true that, Sam had no ability to strategically chart his course to get there.

Sam and I are alike. If I make real progress on this journey to more joy and freedom, it will be in part because of my own effort and skill. But I too cannot see the route and I can’t chart my course. The territory is too vast, my senses too limited. Sometimes, I, like Sam, don’t know when winds from the outside are helping or hindering me. Sometimes a place that seems far from my destination is close, and other times a place that near is far.

Working in Partnership with the One

Here’s the sweetness: Something is to me what I am to Sam. Something can see more than my little ant brain can even conceive of. That Being can see the whole vast canvas of my life, the whole room, and the unending sea outside the window- worlds that I will never touch. I would be wise to work in partnership with that One.

Approximately ten seconds after I complete that thought, I open a book of meditations and read “God is the strength in which I trust.” Last night, I said a prayer: “May I be carried along in a vessel of Trust, in the embrace of Trust.”

I indeed need to trust at this time in my life, because something is unfolding in me, outside of my desiring it. If I really am not driving or directing this journey, the most important prayer to make is one for trust.

I am not Captain of this Ship, but a Passenger on it.

Trust was not the space I have been in. I’ve felt I needed answers (and soon!) about the questions I was facing. I fell into feeling it was all up to me to figure it out.

Now God is whispering to me about trust. And I want to say back, I hear you. The trust thing. The surrender thing. The whole faith thing. Now I am remembering. Its so easy to forget.

Trust. I am not captain of this ship, but a passenger on it.

Trust. The same God that created this vast blue sea I am staring at, that thing which is the gorgeous complexity of nature, the source of life, is here, omnipresent.

 “God is the Strength in which I trust.” I take several breaths focused on each word:

God. It feels euphoric and peaceful to say that word on a slow exhale this morning. God. I love God. I spend several more breaths right there.

God is. This is a living breathing now-ing power.

The. Oh, the definite article, as if to remind me, God is not just one source of strength I trust, God is the primary one.

Strength. In that word I hear the consistency of the divine, the ability to resolve what I cannot. I hear the power to be the whole, know the whole, work with the whole, a whole in which I can only see one part and of which I am simply one part.

In which. I am literally inside God’s strength. In these words there is also a giving up, a placing into the hands of God.

I. This is about me, my choices, my self.

Trust. My whole body seems to exhale as I say it. I’m in the embrace of trust. Trust is arms, trust is a vessel, carrying me in the waters. Trust is sweet.

Just as I place the final period on those words, a large ant, then a few ants, come charging out from the bedroom onto the balcony and into the garden, as if marching back home together. Who knows if Sam is one of them, but Universe? I take your point.

Tara Mohr is a writer, life coach and program officer at a community foundation. To read more of Tara's writing on the spiritual life, visit Bountiful Heart.