It will take the time it takes

It’s the urgency that comes for you. So much of my worry and anxiety is wrapped in this push, this chase, this drag of sensation that I’m not in time, I’m not enough, that I need to do, be and get more done. And not that thing in front of me, all the other things. Money, justice, health and life — you can have it if you just run fast enough and hit all the right steps. But it’s got to be now, or you won’t get it. You won’t have it. You’ll never have it. You’ll be just like all those other people who don’t have it. You’ll suffer. So hurry.

Relationships? Nope. No time. Ask for help? Nope. Connection takes too much time better to go it alone. Creativity. We don’t have time for that.

Supremacy says, “do it faster or you’ll die.” Reality replies, “it’ll take the time it takes, every single time, no matter what.”

This phrase is offered repeatedly the past couple of weeks by my day-to-day friend from deep within her knowing. The thoughtful look as she considers the anxiety I’m speaking. My fears as things go “wrong” as I get into the details of her life while also navigating my own. My fears that I will screw up a visit by a family member, a heart-full human, who is very busy.

She gets that look as she goes inside. Like she’s listening in there. A nod of agreement with herself. “I think it’s just important that he’s here at all. It’ll take the time it takes. And it’s not about accomplishing anything as much as it is him just being here.” My whole being relaxes into this framing. It’s like a “drop your shoulders” for my mental health. I soften into this kindness she offers.

It’ll take the time it takes meets me in the 10 year anniversary of my health adventure as well. I was struggling mightily in 2013 on my birthday. I had failed my DMV eye test after never having any issues in my first 46 years and was on my way to my first pair of distance glasses, my weight was dropping, I was launching a new business direction and life was lonely, hard and chaotic. Nine years ago on my birthday, we weren’t sure whether I would be alive to meet my next birthday as we were deep in the chemo and care. All the birthday’s since have been living into “it’ll take the time it takes” as I meet the subtle violence of”getting back to work,” the tentative joy of “I didn’t think I’d ever do that again,” and the realities of people falling away as the adventure gets longer and longer.

Now as I begin to understand that most of this “timing” is beyond my control and that I will be how I am, I begin to soften into the living. “It is what it is” can sound defeatist to some, but these words meet me here. I’m not fighting time as much any more. It may take a long time. That’s true. It may happen right now. That may also be true. In either case, I am welcome to show up as I am.

I keep drawing the chariot card — and I laugh as I realize that this is a chariot that is guided by a runaway horse and I’m being dragged along behind. “It’ll take the time it takes” meets me and throws me a line as I work my way, hand over hand, back onto the platform of the moving chariot. I steady myself and gradually pull myself up into standing. The platform jerks and bumps. I grab for the reins and wrap them around my lower arms allowing the body to be strongly planted and yet pliable. Allowing any stability to move through the body as support and any sharp change as a wave of connection with reality. The horse feels the change and gradually comes back into relationship. The dance of individual moments begins to align, allowing it all to orient. We’re still moving fast — we’re also moving together — in the reality.

This writing life is so wildly different than I have imagined. It meets me in this anniversary and holds me in the tiny, incremental lived learning that is now the entirety of my life. In so many ways, the health adventure focuses the learning to allow the pieces that need to fall away to come clear so I notice my attachments to these things that are looming over me, ready to fall on me. As I slowly, unravel and slowly widen capacity to turn toward others — so too does the writing come along. In the untangling, in the becoming, in the building of place where I become more and more myself and the world becomes more and more of itself. Here is born deep relating.

Which as always brings me back to building place. My day-to-day friend and I realized yesterday that this is what we’re up to. I read an article where the author commented that we really don’t know what wellness is. We’ve come to believe it’s in some commodity or fix or thing to do to improve. Nope, Colleen Derkatch holds that, “Real wellness means having conditions under which we can flourish. It means social support, medical care that is accessible and empathetic, decent working conditions and ready sources of affordable and nutritious foods.” That description made me cry. I’m crying again now. What a place that would be.

So as I sit with the pain in the world, the pain in my gut, the worries and uncertainty — I move toward. I build. I write. It takes the time it takes. Tiny steps. Mycelial connections. And I am here — alive, listening, learning and connecting. Writing and honoring “it taking the time it takes.”