Divine Timing

I had a moment today whilst viewing church from home, mind you I haven’t watched in a long while simply because there are things that I feel (in my personal opinion) the church as a whole isn’t addressing and it should. But then again I also think there are times when the separation between church and state should be emphasized. For instance, a woman’s body and her right to choose what to do with it. I consider myself a spiritual person, as I do not agree with organized religion being used as a way to manipulate or control people, especially those who are really struggling. There have also been moments in my life where I questioned my beliefs, but that wasn’t acceptable by the “church”. I have to believe that if Jesus was still amongst us today, he would welcome my questioning with open arms & also not hold it against me. I don’t agree with the narrative that homosexuals, transgendered individuals, or drag queens are something to be feared or that we should alienate them because we don’t identify, understand or relate to their experiences. Personally, if we were created in God’s or in the universe’s perfect image, that includes ALL of us. I am digressing, therefore, I will save my rantings on labels, racism, and other forms of social injustice for a different day.

There I was listening to Pastor Wilkerson talk about struggles. It was the first moment in my life where I knew he was going with this and how to listen to God or the Universe’s voice during the difficult or dark moments of our lives. I then began to recall my own “dark” moments and how they’ve made me who I am. Were they easy? Absolutely not. Were there moments where I wanted to rush ahead or skip over the not-so-glossy moments of my life or just get to the other side of that struggle? Yes. Younger versions of me are perhaps the poster child of impatience. But it leads me to think about the concept of divine timing, especially my own.

Naturally, it is those exact moments when I was given a taste of humble pie that taught me the importance of learning to wait and trust the divine timing of my life. I have also learned to not get ahead of said timing because when the blessings do come or the things we’re asking or praying about do come and if we’re not ready we can also hurt ourselves by not knowing how to carry the weight of it all. Additionally, if we do get ahead of our divine timing or we grow impatient or operate from a place of desperation, it can delay our blessings.

If I could send a note to younger Sarita, I know she wouldn’t have listened or learned this lesson for herself. How I clung to my own wonderland and thought that sometimes I knew best. Wrong! Its taken me years to learn that being wrong or the opportunities for improvement are always a gift. A gift of course correction, a gift to try again or view life through a different lens, or simply entertain a new perspective.

Do y’all ever notice how life just goes better when we operate from a state of contentment or relaxation? How if we don’t push or force things, they just come on their own time, and it’s perfect? Yeah, I didn’t get it either at first until I got older. While we can’t control what happens to us, we can control how we respond to it. I’m grateful that my own trauma has been the best teacher. I thought I would never be able to reckon with my grief or be strong enough to face it because it meant that I’d have to revisit losing my dad all over again, something that will never go away but I have learned to live with and manage. I used to think, in fact, I remember praying to God to remove my pain. I didn’t know then what I was truly asking for, because that “relief” came in different forms of blessings in disguise. It came in moments over time where life was being mirrored back to me but I never knew those were the opportunities that were molding me into a stronger version of myself. Moments that also inevitably put me directly on the path of my healing and more importantly, moments that lead me to therapy, moments that lead back to acting, or this place I’m blessed enough to call home aka: New York City.

It all happened in subtle, incremental changes over time, according to God’s or the universe’s great plan for me. Nothing is ever wasted if you learn from it, even if sometimes certain lessons take a little longer to learn than others. I’m still redefining what self-love and self-care look like for me and recognizing boundaries exist or we create them to keep ourselves proactively safe versus reactive. I still reckon with the guilt of having to say “no” to people but the truth is they deserve the best version of me versus a half-hearted me and I am not someone that does anything half-heartedly or half-assed. I always go full heart or full ass in. I don’t know if I would have learned these things on any other timeline, other than my own & I love my timeline! While trusting a force greater than myself is still sometimes hard for me, because I can’t see it and I’m still learning to let go of things beyond my control, still I trust. I know and feel angels all around me. I see them in numbers or in those glorious moments when the train does pull up right when it’s supposed to or as I’m entering the subway at the precise moment when I don’t have to wait longer than two minutes for a train (If you know, you KNOW that the timing of trains in a New Yorker’s life is crucial most of the time). Or if you live in a place were driving is key, y’all know how crucial it can be to hit the road when there isn’t much traffic vs. when there is traffic.

All of which I write in hopes that this also helps you to trust the divine timing of your life. Yes, life is messy as I have previously mentioned in my other posts but to quote Yung Pueblo (2022), “Maturity is when you’re able to finally ride the ups and downs of life without getting tossed around by them. You don’t expect everything to be perfect, you know change is a constant, you don’t judge yourself when times get hard and you live in gratitude and you enjoy the good when it’s here”. I must confess that lately, while I have lacked in being consistent with my gratitude journaling, even if I am just mindful of my blessings it makes life that much more enjoyable.

I know it’s a cliche when I say that it’s a process, yet that doesn’t make those words any less valid. Trust the divine time of your life. As someone who at one point as a young teenager wasn’t sure of being able to make it because the pain I was in was so heavy, I almost couldn’t bear it. I was also wise enough to know that if I ended it all it would be the easy way out (just speaking to my own experience, not at all undermining someone else’s), I can honestly say I regret nothing in my life and I know that I am loved. I am loved by God/the universe in such a way that everything I have been through has ultimately led me to a place of wholeness and back to myself. I never want the weapon formed against me to be me. These days while life isn’t always bright and shiny, and I also am not always bright and shiny I know that there are plenty more of these moments to come and the sun will always rise! So far, I have 100% survived all of my hardest days and so can you! I am a statistician (not the best) but my role as a researcher requires me to work with data, so for the analytics of the world, this is the best possible outcome.

Sometimes love is hard, but love is enough to carry you through things that do happen on purpose, and even the ones that don’t happen on purpose, love inevitably gets you to where you need to be and molds you into who you’ve yet to become. I’m convinced this is the only true currency left in this world. And it really all does begin with loving yourself, caring for yourself & healing yourself first so you can go and love your neighbor. That is my hope for you and the world we live in. This is how we create a better world, and if you can be a badass that cures aids, or ends world hunger, or even finds a cure for cancer in the process, ALL the more power to you dear ones! Remember that your only job is to just show up, and do your best. Even if your best varies (and it does daily) it’s always enough!

Control what you can and leave the rest up to God/the universe. Believe in the divine timing of your life! All a belief really is, is a thought you’re conditioned to keep thinking. Look at Peter Pan, he believed he could fly & he did. I believed I could get a Ph.D. and I did! I thought New York City would be the best thing for me and it has been (so far) in spite of all the challenges that came with it. It begins and ends with faith, faith in the divine, and faith in ourselves.