10 minutes from the miracle
my office this week #7
It’s 9am on a Monday morning and I’m walking to my new happy place: a Nordic-style café, fifteen minutes from my apartment.
Headphones on, David Ghiyam’s latest podcast in my ears. His words land directly:
“When you get to that fed-up energy, you are ten minutes away from the breakthrough.
Your miracle is coming, but you have to love the pain.
You have to allow yourself to break.”
Love the pain.
Allow yourself to break.
Hmmm, that sounds like exactly what I did yesterday.
A brutal confrontation with my inner critic, and instead of resisting, I held it.
I let it break me open.
I think even wrote in my journal somewhere
”it still hurts, but it’s ok I can hold it. I don’t need the pain to go away”
Turns out my instinct is Kabbalah approved.
This morning I’m still feeling the aftermath of it all. Not pain, but an emotional rawness. I exist on the verge of tears. Not from sadness but from tenderness.
I arrive at the cafe and have the urge to listen to “I am blessed”. the words bring an immediate soothing sensation, and yet I crave more.
I pull out my notebook and starting writing down the most poignant lines.
oh the pain that I have seen
feeling scared but loving deep
filling spaces in between.
I am blessed.
holding hands and sharing light
through the heartache and the strife
feeling held up by this life…
Lyrics, poetry, and music can express truths in a way that cradles the heart. As if having someone else capture the precise coordinates of my emotional experience softens the edges of it somehow. Makes it more bearable.
They do say “A burden shared is a burden halved.” Maybe that’s what it is.
My mind travels back in time to my bedroom above the garage, in our Michigan house.
I’m nine years old, lying on the carpet on my stomach. Notebook and pen in front of me. I’ve borrowed my sister’s pink Hello Kitty boom box to play my new Mandy Moore CD.
I start, stop, and rewind the same track for forty minutes.
Writing out every word of “I Wanna Be With You.”
I wanna be with you
there’s nothing more to say
there’s nothing else I want more than to feel this way.
It’s not “a boy from school” that I want to be with. It’s the feeling of longing that I relate to.
There’s something more that I want. I can’t put my finger on what it is, but it’s nice to know Mandy gets it. She feels it too.
Growing up, I was never taught what to do with my big emotions. They never had a place to go… until I found music.
It settled me. Soothed me. Gave my feelings a home.
Blasting Taylor Swift in the shower after a breakup.
Belting Carrie Underwood at sleepovers with friends.
Singing “Hold On for One More Day” on the drive to the hospital during my final month of residency.
Music was my medicine.
The lyrics validated my emotions before I had the tools to do it myself.
My phone buzzes with a message from a friend, bringing me back to my 34 year old body.
A two-minute voice note, responding to an aha moment I’d shared earlier: holding space and reflecting it back to me.
As I listen, I gaze out the café’s wide windows, sunlight pouring through.
And I realize:
I’m not ten minutes away from my miracle.
I’m living it right now.
holding hands and sharing light
through the heartache and the strife
feeling held up by this life
Every Sunday, I invite you into “my office this week” and share a weekly reflection from wherever i’m working in the world. Subscribe to come along for the adventure.