Mother Time & Locksmiths

As I hiked yesterday, the wind was whipping. Its sound like a giant ocean engulfed me and my daughter and my grandpup.

As my manner has become, I began to have anxiety about my business - even out here surrounded by my love, the widespread views of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

I've owned a business right at two years. I take ownership probably too seriously. The constant knowing that ultimately I am responsible for other people's actions on the job, wears me out. I have learned that I am not cut out for business ownership; my business now owns me.

I am working to change these circumstances. My plan is that before August, 2013, the business will have lost its grip around my life.

Since January, I've had days where I just break down. I literally lose it, emotionally.

Yes, the business has been very successful. But, I've told my husband more than once, "It has become a monster."

He responds, "No, it's not a monster. It is simply a successful business that has outgrown the way in which it was designed to be run."

Some say, "Just hire out the parts you don't like." Or, "Just hire more people."

But, that's not my problem. I do not want to hire out or hire more.

I want less.

For me less is more.

As I hiked the Blue Ridge yesterday, I felt the ownership anxiety in my body and gut and heart. I have come to despise this anxiety. I've also been having pain in my body when I sleep. No, no, no. That will not be. I will not develop fibromyalgia for this business or for anything else.

As I hiked, aware of my breath so small and the wind so large...I told my mind to still, my heart to calm, and my self to recall the many accounts in my life and in history of how need has been supplied.

I especially thought of the locksmith incident from last year, an incident I have yet to write about where I was way out in the country, at least 45 minutes from a locksmith, and had accidentally locked a padlock backwards with two Great Pyrenees inside the locked enclosure and I on the outside now unable to pry the lock. To get the padlock loose would require a small hacksaw of some kind. After fiddling with it for almost a half-hour, the sun set and I was in the dark, down a gravel driveway out a narrow gravel road in Walnut Cove. I donned my headlamp and was on the verge of tears because I could reach no one on my cell.

Then...a pick up truck hauling a small enclosed trailer stopped at the end of the gravel driveway. A man got out. He let the truck idle in park as he approached me and I him with my headlamp bright.

"Are you the one with the truck?" he hollered at me from the end of the driveway as he came around the front of his truck as it sat idling on the gravel road.

"No, I'm the one with the padlock problem," I hollered back.

"I don't know anything about a padlock," his voice not as loud now as we narrowed the distance between us.

"Are you a locksmith?" I asked in great wonderment as we came face to face.

"I am," he responded. "I got a call from someone out here, up this road, who has locked their keys in their truck. I've never been out here and I'm wondering if I'm going the right way and if I'll be able to turn around anywhere. I just need to find the person who called me. I saw you and thought maybe you were the person."

I was stunned. "Are you an angel?" I asked him with a chuckle.

We both laughed as I explained to him my predicament and led him down to the padlock that needed the hacksaw.

"I'll take care of you. Just let me go get this truck job done first." He gave me his card and returned in about a half hour. He just happened to have his tiny hacksaw and one new padlock with him on his trailer.

That night, he was an angel.

As I hiked yesterday bringing to mind that incident and others where needs get met spontaneously, I wrote a jingle in my mind and put it to memory.

Mind be still
Heart be whole
All is well with my soul
Mother Time will meet the need
Recall to mind her miraculous deeds

I've never heard or used the term "Mother Time." For now, I like it.

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