i listen. i show up.

there i am preparing for a meeting with my editor and i get this recurring inner message. be there earlier. the first couple of times i dismiss it as a tendril of worrying. really. i am making sure i will be on time. at the time when we made the appointment time she made clear that she had a lot of phone calls to make before seeing me. so i am ready to disregard this prompting as just a recurring thought. but it keeps returning. stronger and stronger. not a shouting voice. no snowballing, i mean, i don't see the mind get caught up in reacting thoughts like if i don't go there earlier this and that would happen or not happen. here's what i finally decide. i'll go into her neighborhood half an hour earlier and take a swirl through a favorite grocery store and see how i feel at that point. so i do. i even get a cup of coffee and sip as slow as i can. but this thought is relentless. it steps up intensity. so i think to myself. okay, what the heck, i'll be outside her house a few minutes earlier. check this out. when i am a couple of houses from my editor's i see these two women getting into a car. i immediately recognize the one getting on the passenger's side is my editor. the first thought i have is this. she has forgotten my appointment. i wave and pace up at the same time. it turns out that a friend is taking my editor to the hospital. it's an emergency. the bottom line is this. if i didn't show up a few minutes earlier i would have been left on the doorstep. i would have been waiting and waiting and outraged. instead i show up and offer her healing blessings. thank you, my innermost and highest self.