It Always Comes Back to You
Image by Ipopba
In my late twenties, I came across this sentence written by the Sufi mystic and poet, Rumi: “Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.” At that point, I was in the throes of heavy grief because I had been rejected by every Ph.D. program I had applied to and my aspiration of becoming a scholar and professor felt completely out of reach. I remember getting a massage shortly after receiving the last rejection letter and weeping on the massage table during my session. There was lots of blubbered apologizing between blowing my noise and crying.
When I encountered these words by Rumi by happenstance, my soul immediately recognized them to be true. A gentle peace and trust washed over me and I knew that no matter what the future held, my dreams of studying, teaching, and writing would eventually be realized.
This blog was the furthest thing from my imagination then, almost ten years ago. And now, I see that those closed opportunities were leading me to this very unique and specific vocation as a minister for the public through this blog.
What I longed to do as a scholar and professor, I am doing now, but in a way that’s even more fulfilling for me because the work is completely on my terms. I don’t have to write academic journal articles about subjects I find insufferably boring to have a fighting chance at a tenure spot. I get to teach and write about subjects I think are truly interesting and exciting.
I’m reminded of this story because this new year has already brought forth an abundance of things I grieved the loss of in 2020 and for some things, many years before then.
Near the end of 2020, I wrote about how my daughter, as lovable as she is, had stolen my sleep for most of the year.
I’m happy to report that she now sleeps close to 13 hours each night and I slumber for just as long. These days, I turn in by 8 p.m. and sleep until 6 a.m., which means 10 hours of sleep! It’s as if my body (and my daughter) are making up for the lost sleep of 2020.
Also, since ending my graduate program in 2010, my husband and I struggled to make adult friends. I wrote about this struggle in an essay here, several years ago, and this struggle remained until well, last fall.
One would assume that during a pandemic would be the absolute worst time to make friends and yet, paradoxically, it has ushered in the most rich and meaningful friendships—friendships that have required a teeny portion of the labor I expended in previous relationships. Interesting, right? It has taught me to never put the ways of God in a box.
I’m beginning this year in a state of wonder. What a wonder-ful place to start.
There are other instances of this phenomenon that I won’t go into for the moment but I just wanted to write this post to hopefully encourage some of you who are grieving the loss of something.
Surrender to the loss. Believe me, I know some of us have lost a LOT in 2020.
Let it go.
Trust that it will come back to you in its own time, in a different form,
when you’re ready to receive it.