Waiting for the Other Shoe

"You're waiting for the other shoe to drop. You're so tangled up in your fear that you're not really experiencing the job of what's happening in your life right now."

We'd just sat down to a delicious meal when my friend delivered this wisdom. Although my life was flowing like a river out of the Rocky Mountains I was having a hard time enjoying it. I was fretting. Pacing. Worried about events that hadn't happened yet. Her words stopped me mid-sentence.

She was right.  (Damn it)

Life was so good for me -- better in fact, that it had been in months. And yet. I was waiting for that other shoe to drop, crushing all that long-sought happiness. My happiness was being swallowed up by the fear monster. The perceived pain I was feeling felt real and yet--it wasn't. It was just phantom pain I was reliving from the past even though that I wasn't in the past--I had moved forward to a new time continuum.

If you're like me, you might tend to focus on the shoe rather than the joy. But focusing  on what seems like a precariously placed shoe isn't going to make it stop from falling.

Waiting for that shoe to take it's tumble exacts a cost.
It tightens your chest making it hard to breath.
It closes off your heart.
It distracts you away from what really matters.
It squeezes the joy right out of your life and everything in it.

The only thing that can stop the shoe from falling is out of your control. Shoes are gonna drop sometimes and it's okay. You will be ok. You always have been and you always will be.