On the eve of my birthday I have a tradition of watching the sunset by myself.
Sometimes I journal, take inventory of the past year and set goals. Other times, I simply watch the sun fall and say goodbye to the year.
I always do it somewhere with a spectacular view and I always take a picture.
A few years ago, I choose Meditation Mount, one of my favorite places in Ojai, California, for my birthday eve tradition.
As I walked along the path to the lookout point surrounded by mountains and overlooking the spectacular valley my heart filled with excitement – it was going to be an amazing sunset.
I found the perfect rock to sit on, took out my phone to snap a photo, and felt my heart fall.
My phone was frozen.
In a race against a setting sun I frantically powered my phone on and off, praying, cursing, doing everything I could think of, but nothing was working.
At this point, I’d already decided one thing I was going to work on in the coming year:
To have faith that even when it doesn’t feel like it, and I would be disappointed something wasn’t going how I wanted, to trust the universe, or a higher power was working in my favor for something even better to happen.
Life’s funny how sometimes when we set an intention, or decide something, we’re almost immediately presented with a test.
As the sun began setting, as painful as it felt, I knew, I had to let go of not being able to capture it in a photo and enjoy the moment.
I had to accept there was nothing more I could do and trust it would be OK.
The sun fell and as I soaked up every bit of spectacular pink and purple clouds I turned around and there they were – a couple with professional camera gear snapping away.
“They must be getting amazing shots!” I thought to myself.
As darkness crept in and they began packing up, I approached the couple and told them about my birthday eve tradition, frozen phone and asked if they got any good shots they’d mind sharing with me.
“TONS!” The man said. “I even got some with you looking out at the clouds. What’s your email? We’ll send you some.”
About 20 minutes later my phone miraculously became unfrozen. It just began buzzing – I didn’t do a thing.
I opened my email and there it was – an amazing picture of me watching the sunset with happy birthday wishes from the couple.
I laughed knowing this was so much better than any photo I could’ve taken and had my phone not frozen, I never would’ve had it to treasure.
I share this story as a reminder when something isn’t going how you want and you’re feeling frustrated, or even devastated, to trust that something even better will happen for you.
The universe works in mysterious ways and even when it doesn’t feel like it we must hold faith that it has our best interest at heart and something even better than we could’ve planned or imagined is on the way. {Click to Tweet this!}
It may even show up today.
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