The Blind Man

[AkashicWreckage]

A few weeks ago, I began to get quite antsy. I desired to feel the warmth of the sun on my body, to sink my feet into the sand, to hear the sounds of the ocean and to smell the freshness of the salt air. I watched the weather forecast with anticipation. Hooray! Beach weather would be mine to enjoy that Friday, and I couldn't wait! I spoke with my "beach buddy" about my plans, and that we should leave early because I wanted to enjoy every second of my time at the beach. Friday arrived, beautiful blue sky, warm---all of the ingredients that I prayed would come together for me, arrived.

The best laid plans---we didn't leave early, I could feel myself getting upset. We had to make a few stops, I moved to the next level, a bit pissed off. Finally, we made the turn onto road that paralleled the ocean. As we passed one park, I could see it was almost filled up with cars, and the tension mounted. Traveled north a bit, pulled into our usual beach haunt, and began to circle the parking lot--- and we kept going around and around---no spots available! With each minute that passed, as we circled the lot for a half hour, the realization began to dawn on me that this day that I had anticipated, might not turn out to be the way I had envisioned it. And, I went into super pissed off mode.

We headed back south to another park, the lot was closed, all filled up. There was another park down the road, we circled there for 15 minutes to no avail. At this point, I couldn't control my tears, I began to cry... I ordered my friend to take me back home, the day was totally a disaster, it was ruined. So, we headed over the bridge and I was still crying, and wondering to myself what was going on? Why were there no parking spots? Why was I being denied access to what I needed?

As we went over the bridge and approached the traffic light, I ordered my friend to make a left at the light. I didn't have a clue why I had barked that order, and I was a bit puzzled at the sharpness of my voice. As we headed south on that busy road, I tried to make sense of why we should even be on that road. Yes, there were plenty of other beaches up and down the coast, but I didn't have much faith that those beaches wouldn't have filled parking lots...As I looked out the window, I was shocked to see empty building after empty building; strip shopping centers--empty; large For Lease signs, EVERYWHERE. All that vacant real estate had happened within a few very short months---mile after mile, emptiness. And yet, we were in traffic. Speed limit was 45 and yet we were crawling at about 20 miles an hour, what was going on?

We continued to move south, very slowly crawling along---this was not a busy area, shopping centers were closed, and here we were experiencing being just one car in a sea of other cars. On the stretch of road ahead, there were no traffic lights, no major intersections. Suddenly, I saw a man trying to move between cars. He wasn't a very big man, slight build, and he was using his white cane to navigate across those 3 lanes of traffic! There was a blind man attempting to cross this major north south route, with nothing but his cane, and most likely his faith that he could cross this road!

Amazing!

One would most certainly not find this amazing would it have happened elsewhere, in a busier part of town, or in a place where there were apartment buildings, condos etc. This was NOT the usual, this was not an ordinary place to see a blind man, and certainly this was quite a dangerous place for anyone to attempt to cross a road. In the brief moments when so much was going through my brain, trying to make some sort of sense of it---I could see the blind man bumping into cars, he turned around several times heading back to the side of the road and then back out into the traffic again! My friend at this point was looking for a spot to pull over safely and I began to not want to even look---I was sure this was going to end in a bad way. I had my eyes covered with my hands when my friend informed me that someone had gotten out of their car and was trying to help the man.

We continued on our way and I knew immediately that this was the way of this day. I looked at my friend and said, "Tell me that what we just witnessed wasn't meant for us, and others to see. Tell me this wasn't a miracle."

If we hadn't run late, if we hadn't made stops, if we hadn't circled various parking lots for over an hour, if I hadn't given up on the beach, if I hadn't had the thought to turn onto that road, if there hadn't been traffic---we wouldn't have seen a blind man attempting to make his way to the other side, we wouldn't have seen someone abandon his car to participate in the care of another. Faceless, nameless strangers, all within the protection of their vehicles, had to have been impacted by this most unlikely event.

What was the lesson or lessens? Was this just some random, confused blind man? Sure, it could have been that, we may never know---or was it an opportunity to see faith and trust in action?

I prefer to realize that the Universe conspired that day to reveal access to that which was needed...and here I thought that what I needed was to feel the sun on my body, to sink my feet into the sand, to hear the sound of the ocean....

We did get to a beach that day---shortly after that we found a virtually empty parking lot, and a pristine, quiet beach...