Out of the Dark Pit and Into the Sun

I had an adventure in Truth the other day. With teaching five classes this semester my days are full with lots to be done—more than there is time for. But in the midst of the normal duties the other day I had an interruption that should have taken only a few minutes and ended up taking almost an hour. A few years ago that would have ruined my day, but Wednesday it made my day.

Every year I buy a hundred pounds of raw almonds from my cousin in California. She picks them up right at the almonds orchard and drives them out to me so they are fresh. Well, she came the other morning to deliver them while I was at work. Her daughter called to get directions so they could give me the almonds. She told me they were on University Avenue and so I told her how to get to the parking lot where my car was parked from there.

From what she told me they were close, so I hung up the phone and walked down to the parking lot and waited and waited and waited. Finally she called again. They were at UVU and, of course, they couldn’t find where I was. As I questioned her I realized that when they first called they weren’t on University Avenue at all. They were on University Parkway so that the directions I had given took them farther away instead of to me. This also meant they were a good twenty minutes from where I was.

I gave her new directions and hung up the phone. I had several options at this point and years ago I know the option I would have taken would have landed me deep in the Pit of Illusion where I would have been stuck for the rest of the day. But the Truth was they weren’t there yet. I could get upset, but it wouldn’t make them come any faster. There wasn’t enough time to go back to my office and get anything done, but instead of spending the time fretting over all I needed to do and thinking of this as wasted time, I took a deep breath, said thanks for the fact that I was waiting in a beautiful area of campus, and took a short walk. I walked down a paved path to the duck pond. The quacking greeted me before I could see the ducks and once I was near enough to see the pond, I laughed as two of the ducks raced across the pond. By half flying and half paddling their webbed feet in the water they skimmed across the pond spraying water on all the other ducks and quacking louding as if arguing over who had won the race.

Sun warmed everything to the perfect temperature and the brook gently flowed beside me as if to reassure me that all is right with the world. By the time my cousin arrived, I’d spent the most delightful twenty minutes of my day and was actually invigorated when I got back to my work. That wouldn’t have been the case if I’d slipped into the Pit of Illusion.

I love Living in Truth. All this peace is good for my soul.