Are you paying attention?

I have a story I want to share with you. We’ve been talking a lot about signs from Spirit lately and it’s no coincidence that this sign unfolded in perfect Divine time.

Do you ask Spirit for help with decisions or answers to questions that have been weighing on you?

Do you pay attention to the answers you’re given through people, songs, billboards, license plates, books, podcasts, and a myriad of other things?

One of the questions I ask in meditation every morning is:

What is it that I need to know now?

Last week in my meditation when I asked that question, I heard:

You need to trust.

When I heard that, my humanness wanted to argue. “What do you mean, trust? I do the things I’m guided to do.”

I was confused by this because I thought I was doing good trusting. I will be the first to admit that trust has been an issue for me all my life, but in the past several years I have gained awareness of places that I was controlling and worked on trusting the process instead.

“So, where is it that I’m not trusting?” I asked Spirit a few days later when I couldn’t seem to find the answer. I didn’t get an immediate response; did I mention that patience is something else I have struggled with?

Then when I was walking the trail this weekend, training for going to Spain and walking the Camino de Santiago in September (more to come on that!), I got my answer.

I was leisurely walking along a beautiful trail through the woods, along a creek, taking pictures of nature’s beauty along the way when a man and his dog passed me. They were walking much faster than I was.

We exchanged greetings as he walked in front of me, and I noticed that his dog was not on a leash.

The dog was by the man’s side when something caught his attention in the grass, and he stopped to investigate.

The man just kept walking. I turned around and checked on the dog to make sure he was coming, but his owner didn’t. I turned around again, and the dog was slowly making his way to catch up, but the man never turned around to look, not even once.

What happened next was like a scene from a movie that I was watching.

The sun was shining through the trees and onto the man as he walked straight ahead and I heard, “That’s what trust looks like.”

I felt that in every cell of my body.

Memories flooded my mind of all the times that I would just keep checking on things, not really trusting others or situations to work out.

That’s how Spirit works through other people. He had no idea that walking his dog and trusting so fully that he didn’t have to check on him would be impactful for me. It allowed me to feel what my not trusting felt like so I can recognize it more easily.

Here’s the thing, a man walking and not checking to make sure his dog was following him would not be a sign of trust for everyone, but it is for me.

You see, Spirit knows how much I love my dogs and wouldn’t want anything to happen to them, so that sign worked for me.

Spirit knows you too, and knows what signs to send you, are you paying attention?

When we change the world changes.