Found Time

Found Time "Don't drink the phosphosoda!" said the voice in the phone. That's how I found out my surgeon had broken her hand, thereby cancelling surgery (and required prep) I had anticipated for months, and making a mockery of the four weeks of totally blank Outlook Express calendar on my computer set aside for recovery. No projects. No appointments. No anything.

Even in my most laidback periods of life when I was not working a full-time position, there was always something to be done, to do, to explore. Hair appointments. Lunch with friends. Seminars and book readings. Hours and hours, days and days, weeks and weeks, now loomed. Hey, I had thought I was going to have my husband at my beck and call while I slept off anesthesia and healed cut muscles. Everyone had told me to make sure I took it easy. And I took their advice. Now look where their advice had gotten me. The Land of Panic, that is where I was and feared I would stay.

After two days in shock from disappointment and fear of what this all meant, I was desperately praying for divine guidance. Sitting on my back deck, staring at red geraniums and purple wave petunias, begging even them to give me a clue, it hit me. What if I didn't look at this time as some heaven sent intervention into my surgery schedule (even I don't believe God would break my doc's hand to keep me from going under the knife)? What if what this time was, was what it was - FOUND TIME. Time to let things bubble to the surface. Time to see what I would have missed if I had been lying flat on my back with a bell for calling my servant-spouse in one hand and a book in the other.

The trick would be not to manufacture things to do but let them just appear out of the universe. A warm visit with in-laws. My newlywed son and his wife's move into their first home or celebrating family friends who rejoiced in their 50th anniversary. Writing an unexpected magazine article asked for and due the week after my surgery date. Lunch with new friends and a day with an old one who came in from California unexpectedly. Silence on the deck watching the birds and bunnies. Strength to be the parent and spouse I needed to be right now. Playing with paper as I create my custom cards. Playing with words as I create this blog.

It has come to mind more than once that I should have been living my life this way from the start. Anticipating each day. Not working so hard to fill it. Enjoying the blank hours on my calendar and appreciating the Found Time.

Now I am off to see what bubbles up today....