The tale of my Passport Renewal Adventure ended yesterday with me on the plane on the way back to Portland. I’m going to give you the short version of what happened.
I missed the shuttle back to Corvallis by two minutes because I stopped to go to the bathroom. Because I missed the shuttle, I had time to call a friend who recommended I call AAA and see if they could help me. They told me I needed to drive to Seattle to a passport Center if I had any chance of getting my passport renewed in one day.
I called the number AAA gave me, went through many levels of “if you want X, press one if you want Y, press two….” Finally I got a human being on the line, and she told me I needed to make an appointment with the office in Seattle first thing Friday morning. They could renew my passport there that day, if they weren’t too busy. Let me emphasize the “if they weren’t too busy” part.
The appointment making was computerized. They gave me a confirmation number I needed to bring with me if I wanted to get my passport renewed. I tried to type the number in, but I was so tired, typing in numbers is difficult for me, and I was holding my cell phone so I had to do it with one hand, so I couldn’t find exactly where I was on the keyboard, so I kept making mistakes, so I kept hitting the key to repeat the instructions. But it wasn’t just the confirmation code, it was all of the instructions I had them repeat four times.
I called my daughter, remember it’s her birthday, and started to cry. I had a Mommy Meltdown. The roles reversed. “Take a deep breath,” my daughter told me. “We will figure this out.”
I have an appointment at nine at 9 AM in Seattle, I don’t drive, and everyone has a job and can’t take the day off to guide me. I keep calling friends and finally one of my clients a young woman of 25, offers to pick me up at five o’clock in the morning and drive me to Seattle for my nine o’clock appointment.
Here come the miracles:
Because I missed the shuttle by two minutes I was able to arrange getting my passport on Friday, and I didn’t have to go to Corvallis and come back to Portland and pay 85 more dollars for the shuttle.
My client lives 10 minutes away from my daughter.
We got to my appointment in Seattle at exactly 9 o’clock. Exactly 9 o’clock.
The day with my client turns out to be my first day-long Play Date. She begins her trip discouraged and afraid she’s going to sabotage her future. We end the day with her excited, deliriously excited, about her future. Not bad.
My husband drove from Corvallis up to Portland Thursday night, bringing me my Oregon Identification Card, which I thought I might need to get my passport. I didn’t need it to get my passport, so I thought perhaps he had made a trip for nothing. As it turned out, though, in order to go back into the passport office and pick up my passport, I had to have a government issued picture ID. If Murray hadn’t driven up from Corvallis, my passport would still be sitting in the passport office in Seattle and my whole trip would’ve been for nothing.
Because I miss my shuttle back to Corvallis, I got to go with my 31-year-old daughter out to lunch with her friends from work. A rare opportunity to see my daughter with her friends, to witness the life she has created. I had a beer, but nobody else could because they were working. That beer tasted GOOD.
Because my passport turned out to be valid but invalid, I got to spend a lot of time with a young woman who really needed me. I needed her, and she needed me. Our day was magical from start to finish. Everyone we met was helpful, courteous, cheerful, and kind. Even the parking lot attendant helped us out when we came in one half hour late for the early bird special. “We missed the early bird special by just a half half hour!” I said as he walked up to her car. He went through quite a lot of trouble to make sure we got the early bird rate, saving me at least $20. He didn’t have to do that. He got nothing out of it for himself, except the satisfaction of helping people out.But that was what our whole day was like.
The security guards in the federal building were cheerful, friendly, and willing to listen to my sad story. When we left the passport office with my renewed passport, renewed until the year 2019, I made up a little song for them on the spot. We all laughed.
How you do anything is how you do everything. If you are not able to see clearly about what your life is calling you to do, it might be because you are telling yourself a disaster story instead of a miracle story. All day long things happen to us — the car won’t start, the dog throws up on the carpet, there’s an accident on the road and traffic is snarled, your passport is valid but in valid when you were on a trip of a lifetime to Bali. What do you get to do? How are you going to choose?
We choose to cloud our vision and pollute our purpose or we choose to see the miracle in everything. We are like that optimistic child who was given a hill of horse manure for Christmas. He shouts his glee and starts digging in the pile. “Why are you digging in that pile of manure?” His parents ask him. “With this much manure, there must be a pony in there somewhere!” he exclaims and keeps on digging.
Let’s all keep on digging, shall we? Let’s clear our energy field from resentment, disappointment, anger, blaming, feeling like a victim, hopelessness, despair — all that energetic crud that clogs our pipes. This is emotional cholesterol.
Send me your stories. When did you choose a miracle instead of a disaster? If you’re having trouble finding the miracle in the disaster, you might want to take me up on my offer of a free 15 minute Play with Possibility Date. I promise you will be able to shift something. I can almost guarantee I’ll get you to laugh. If you can laugh, you can live.
Blessings,
Vicki