As I’m sitting here helping to put the finishing touches on my new website, downloading the app for my new email address and setting up my Stripe account, something catches my eye. In my peripheral vision, I see a big brown day planner. I know exactly what it is…. it was very important to me at one time. Something told me to stop what I’m doing and pull it out. So I do. It has been sitting in the same location in my home desk, and not opened or touched, since October 2022. Almost 3 full years this has sat right here, next to me. And today, my eyes decided to see it and my brain decided to reach for it.
Inside was not only a handful of old business cards, but also a list of states I was licensed in, business cards of old peers and business partners, a list of clients with bullet points to follow up on, annuity brochures and a social security guide. And finally, a step by step “how-to” log in and submit my annual review. And, maybe for the first time, I just sat back and smiled at it all.
At the lessons.
At the growth.
This planner was a gift, and probably the reason why I didn’t throw it away with everything else all those years ago. For liability and confidentially reasons I was actually ordered and legally required to turn in or destroy and dispose of everything and anything related to PRU.
But this I kept.
Maybe knowing that someday I would finally be able to look back at this memory, the gifting of this planner and all it represented, with more gratitude than hurt. With more hope than hate. With more forgiveness than resentment. With more empathy than judgement. With more love for myself and appreciation for what that time, rhyme and season ultimately gave me. It gave me, me. It made me who I am. You are built in the tough times. In the trials. In the agony. Good times and success are great. But they aren’t what makes you. Fundamentally, at your core. It’s the hard times. The times that in the moment you want to forget. The times that make you question your every choice and your very being.
I wouldn’t be where I am or who I am, had I not once received this planner. And for the first time, I can smirk at it all. Giving a little grin to the universe, who did in fact know what she was doing the whole time, after all. Even though it didn’t feel like it back then, she had my back. Leading me right were I was meant to be. And this planner becoming visible to me tonight, of all nights, was just the sweetest wink and reminder that I am on the right path and this is all for a reason greater than I ever knew at the time, or can even imagine now.
So if you are in the middle of it. Right in the thick. Of the hard, the confusing, of the hurt and the suck and the pain. Know that this is all divine timing. All a plan. No it doesn’t make it any less hard today, but I promise you, you will look back one day and smirk. It’s all happening for you and leading you to where and who you are meant to be. Keep going.