When You Least Expect It......

    Finding an arrowhead this summer was - exciting.  The thing is, I had been looking for one for about, hmmm, 30 years!!  So, it was kind of monumental.  Let’s just call it on the scale of “life time dream come true.“

    I always get a little chuckle when I think about how ordinary that morning was and how clueless I was to what I would find.  As I made my way through the woods, the dew was still heavy on the long grass. The air, already warm, was making promises of another hot day.
I noticed that spring was over and the deepening green of summer had begun. The trails were still a little soft and even somewhat disheveled in places from the rains the week before.  I had walked this path hundreds of times, but the rain stirred things up.  And on an uphill path towards the top where the ground had given way, I noticed something unusual nestled into the ground, half peering out.  And there it was, so simple, as if waiting to be found.   

     Historical objects, especially those made by hand, always give me the chills. And in the days afterward, I could not help but think of the arrowhead and the indigenous man who made it so many years ago, his skilled hand turning stones into tools. Who was he? What was his life like? What were his dreams?  I can only IMAGINE, and now as it lay in my hands, the thread of time weaving two stories together.  

     I had looked in fields and in forests.  I walked creek beds and asked the locals. I had all but given up on finding one.  Staying open to possibility can be difficult in the face of challenges and disappointment.  It can certainly seem better to reside in the black or white of what we think we know.  Sometimes this is prudent.  But do we really know?  What happens when a life long dream comes true on an ordinary day when you least expect it?  What happens when we open our hearts to the possibility that things can change, that things can be different, that good will come?  What happens when we no longer let disappointment dictate our future, what we hope for and want?  It’s a risk- I know and not always easy.  But it softens us and it softens our hearts as we learn to trust in our dreams again and leave the questions to the universe as they unfold one moment at a time.