"I wish for you to be free from doubt,
when you feel left behind, or left out -
when the world seems brighter everywhere else,
and your mind is lost inside a wishing well...
right on time,
you're right on time..."
This afternoon I discovered that my husband "gets" me...and, in fact, he get me better than I realized. The other day I was feeling blue. Usually when I have those moments...moments when I've reached an inner impasse...I at least have some sense of what is standing in my way. But this time, nada. It was just an emotional labyrinth of...well, blueness.
It usually wasn't debilitating, so I "carried on." Often I stumbled, but most of the time, I could catch myself. Yet that day, just under the surface, there was a feeling of emotional emptiness. A disorientation that left me wobbly. I didn't want to talk about it with anyone. However at one point, I found myself wandering into Jeff's office, for...what seemed like...no apparent reason. I sat down on the floor with my laptop but just stared at the screen. I wasn't really sure why I was there, but I also didn't feel like I could be anywhere else.
A few minutes later, he asked me if I would like to hear a song by an artist he'd met at a folk music conference. "Sure," I said, although I was barely listening. Clearly, my ears were hearing the music, but my heart just wasn't connecting the dots. When it was over, I thanked him for sharing, but didn't make any further comments about the song.
Jeff must have realized that something was "off," if I didn't have anything to say. But rather than pressing me for a review, he quietly emailed me a link to the song so that I could listen to it when I was ready. Since it was pretty obvious that I really wasn't ready then...and actually, I wasn't ready for days.
Over the course of the week, I opened his email five or six times, and still wasn't impelled to listen. So, I returned it to my inbox. Until today. For some reason, today, I was ready...it was exactly the right time.
Working alone at the kitchen table, I blithely opened his email, and clicked on the link.
From the very first chord, something reached down into the soil of my heart and started to tug at the dock root of some pretty deep weeds. These were weeds of regret, guilt, and self-doubt. Listening to Ellis' song, I realized, immediately, that I'd never really gotten to the base issue of my sorrow -- the one that seemed to be sending shoots up in random places...always catching me by surprise.
Ellis is a gamin-faced pixie of a singer-songwriter. And in her thoughtfully written "Right on Time" she gets right to the heart of my sadness...choices that were poorly timed, misaligned steps, interrupted plans...regrettable decisions.
I don't think I need to go into how this kind of thinking eats away at our peace. At the heart of regret is an inflated sense of our own power in our lives...a self-centered determinism that leaves God out of His own creation. But since it doesn't make sense spiritually, it can't thrive in an environment where God, good is the only Cause, Creator, and Choreographer.
Ellis' song reminded me that God has been in charge of every single, solitary step on my life path. There has never been a moment when I have changed the tempo, rushed headlong onto the stage of my life, or tripped myself up...or down.
I may not understand where the next step will lead me, or how the timing fits, but I can trust God. The music is His, and so is the choreography. Every moment of my life, every transition, every entrance and exit is already...right on time.
Jesus trusted the timing of his life to the governance of His divine Chronographer...and Choreographer!! I want to follow in his steps.
Ellis sings:
"When everywhere you look you see regret.
Caught up in the past, and what might have been.
What we can never know, will make our heads spin.
A little love, a little trust, a lot of forgiveness
Right on time,
You're right on time...
What if we're right on time,
right on time,
what if we're right on time..."
I am starting to see...in so many ways...that we are always "right on time." It may seem messy. Our short-sightedness may mistake a step out-of-time, for the prelude to a fall. But trusting in God always brings us into alignment with a divine plan.
That's when we discover something lovely in our most awkward steps...
Jeff understood that all he had to do was trust that Love was leading him to share Ellis' song with me. And when the time was right, he knew I'd be led to listen to it. I'm so grateful that I can now share it with you...
with Love,
Kate
I hope you enjoy Ellis Delaney's"Right on Time"...when you are ready.
