Thank you anyway

This is the only way I know how to pray

All the balls of my future are in other people’s courts.

A week or so ago, I was filling out paperwork, sending emails, reaching deadlines, uploading things here and there and waiting for this here moment, when I could take a breath. Now I’m existing in it and I’m waiting for other people to do their jobs with less urgency than I feel for my own life.

Yesterday morning, I woke up anxious, my palms itching from lack of control over all of my situations. I drank coffee, I breathed, I read four chapters of a novel, and when I was done, there was nothing to do but the thing I know to do. I pulled on my leggings and a tank top and went outside.

The sun is out in England, finally, after the most drawn-out winter, so I rolled my yoga mat out on my patio and laid down on it and stared up at the sky - vibrant blue with layer-upon-layer of clouds of different thicknesses unfurling above me. The closest veil danced across my line of vision, and I felt a pull at the unnameable thread from my heart to the sky, an ache to know I’m connected to it all, to water and vapor and air. A tear rolled from the corner of each eye.

I opened my palms on the ground and let go of the heavy things: worry, anxiety, frustration, panic.

And when they were empty, I asked for the lighter things: patience, hope, trust.

I still felt antsy in my body, so for twenty minutes I moved and stretched in the sunlight. I reached my hands to the sky and felt the earth beneath my feet in mountain pose and bent low in downward dog. I rolled and waved, metabolising all the emotions that are not whispers, but solid things, and when I laid back down at the end and lifted my eyes to the sky, a red kite swooped over my house, then a cloud of starlings.

And maybe - probably - it was a coincidence, but I said thank you anyway.

xx

Faith