Washed ashore
No-man’s-land has decided it’s not yet time to let me go.
I have been here a fair bit longer than I anticipated not too long ago. I had felt my boat picking up speed, moving fast towards the rapid ahead.
A sudden wave has washed my boat ashore. For a moment I sat stock-still; in the blink of an eye the momentum was gone. It was as if time had come to a standstill.
The sound of water flushing in through the hole in the bottom, had brought me back to reality. I climbed out of the boat and sat down on the shore, resting my head in my hands.
What to do? Where to go? It felt like the rug had been pulled from under me. It was as if I had fallen into a sinkhole. Outer forces were preventing me from reaching the border. The hole was deep. I could see the light above me, but the walls were too high to simply jump out. Was the sinkhole actually a pitfall? Did it matter? Either way I was stranded in no-man’s-land.
Bastet’s words from a while ago, about the feeling of being in no-man’s-land, came back to my mind:
“And that is where you are indeed”, she answered me. “And this is what you will feel like more and more often. It is even what you will embrace as your new comfort zone. It will be your safe place. The place where neither past nor future exists. The place where you can simply be, recharge, unwind, and enjoy the silence before the storm takes you again.”
It took me a good twenty-four hours to climb out of the emotional hole. The experience had forced me to rise to a whole new level of trust and surrender to the knowing that everything is always in perfect Divine order. It didn’t matter that my boat had crashed on the way to the border. Maybe the border was still closed or it simply wasn’t the right time for me to cross it.
I have embraced my extended in-between time. Sooner or later, at the perfect right time, the border to the next chapter of my life will open, and I will be ready to cross it. Till then, I will enjoy the walk, and the not yet knowing what lays ahead.
Inshallah[1], the road ahead is smooth.
[1] Inshallah is the Arabic word for God willing, which you can also read as ‘if it is meant to be’.