What had I been thinking? I began trying to figure out how to explain to our Board, our congregation, Unity Worldwide Ministries, and everyone else in my life that I had made a terrible, awful, monumental miscalculation. I realized in that moment that, in addition to no time, I had no words to explain what a huge mistake I'd made in applying to ministerial school.

Fortunately, by this point in my spiritual journey, I had learned at least one very useful lesson: when things seem completely hopeless and impossible, the best thing to do is usually to do nothing. Stop... breathe... turn away from the "impossible" and become still. This type of "doing nothing" is not easy for me, and it was not easy in that moment. With nearly every breath, my human, egoic brain was screaming, "THERE'S NO TIME TO JUST SIT HERE! LOOK AT ALL THAT WORK!" Stop ... breathe ... "ALL OF THIS STOPPING AND BREATHING IS JUST PUTTING ME FURTHER AND FURTHER BEHIND!"... stop ... breathe ...

I'd like to report that in that moment of stopping I knew everything would be well, but what really happened was that I decided to make a schedule. It only confirmed what I already knew; there were not enough hours in the day. I double-checked my schedule, looking for some discretionary activities to eliminate, and guess what? I found a 2 ½ hour time slot at the start of each day, from 5:00 - 7:30am. Suddenly I had nearly 20 extra hours a week, and my human, egoic brain was quite relieved.

Looking at my schedule again, I made a "duh!" connection - that extra 2 ½ hours each day had been my sacred time, my time for prayer, meditation, study, and contemplation. My tithe of time and spiritual treasure. I'd eliminated the 10% of my day which made the other 90% productive and useful. And, without investing that 10% of the day to ground myself, the entire 100% left over was never enough to do everything I needed to do.

I took a deep, deep breath, and gave back that tithe of time to my spiritual practice. I tore up my schedule and promised myself that I would not look at the mountain of work which needed to get done. Going forward, I would do in each moment that which was before me to do in that moment. Looking at the mountain only reminded me that - in time - this was an impossible task. Focusing on the one task before me in any given moment allowed me to breathe and do that one task before me in that particular moment of eternity.

At the end of that year, as I was packing to return to Unity Village for my next round of classes, my husband asked if I had time to take a break and watch an episode of Grey's Anatomy, which had become a Netflix favorite of ours. I did have time for a break, and when I pulled up the next episode, I noticed it was #136... not only had I done everything which needed to be done in the past year, I'd also watched 135 episodes of Grey's Anatomy!   

Sometimes you just have to smile a little bit at the way things work out.