This post is a continuation of The Miracle Log series where I highlight real-life stories of miracles and synchronicity from client readings and from my own life.
As I sit on the patio writing this, I’m seven stories up watching the changing blues of the sea in front of me and listening to the chirping of birds stretching their wings and calling the day to life. I’m on vacation with my family in Mexico, and life is feeling pretty damn good.
It’s a day-long drive from my small mountain town in Colorado and every bit worth the trip. The eleven hours in the car went easily and relatively quickly, and even though we were all in good spirits and excited to be here, our entry into vacation mode was a bit rocky.
After crossing the border, my phone no longer received service, which I expected and was used to from traveling here before. No biggie. We had everything we needed to know about checking into our condo saved in the calendar in my phone, and we’ve been to this town so many times that we know the route by heart.
But when we got here and got settled in, one glaring thing was missing - the wifi password.
Look, I know in the grand scheme of things wifi issues are not a big deal. We’re talking first-world problem here. And yet it felt kind of major at the time.
It was Wednesday evening, and my husband was going to need to check in with work on Thursday and Friday. Our condo owner and property manager were not onsite (or if they were we didn’t know how to find them), and it was kind of a chicken and egg issue. I needed service to reach out to them to ask about the wifi, but obviously if I had service there wouldn’t have been an issue.
So we did what any stressed travelers would do after 11 hours in the car. We said “fuck it, let’s go to the beach.” There were still a couple hours until sunset, so we threw on our swimsuits, left our phones at the condo and headed down to get some salt water therapy.
But lo and behold that ended up feeling hard too.
The ocean was raging bigger than we’d ever seen it do here, and when we tried to get in we all got pummeled on rocks and injured our toes. Not the best start.
We decided we probably needed food and a stiff drink, and so we trekked back to the condo to get settled and get everything figured out. My husband and I did that tired bickering thing on the way back to our building and decided that maybe one of us would venture down to the pool bar after we ate and see if they had wifi there that we could use to reach out to our owner and ask for our own condo’s wifi code. The only hitch was that we’d have to presumably sit there and wait for a response, and it was nighttime by now and we didn’t know if they’d be responsive.
Again, I know these are not major problems, but I’m trying to paint a picture here so you can fully appreciate what happens next. We were tired. We were road weary. We were hungry and irritable and half our toes felt broken. Life felt really freaking hard.
My husband and my daughter set to work in the kitchen squeezing limes. Because, um, Mexico. And margaritas. My body was finally feeling a little more grounded and my travel tummy was ready to settle, so I took a quiet moment alone in the bathroom. (That’s the eloquent way of saying that I needed to poop.)
My older sister Lacy has always taught her clients who are new to meditating to take a couple breaths every time they sit on the toilet as a way to welcome the practice of stillness. While this has been a downright revolutionary practice for other people, it’s always made me giggle a little. But what do you think I inadvertently found myself doing sitting there on the toilet? That’s right, suddenly I noticed I was taking a few centering breaths and calling my energy back.
I said to myself “This doesn’t have to be so hard.” I took a moment to still and center my energy, and then I reminded myself that I am powerful, I am connected and I have everything I need inside of me.
I didn’t want to have to go down to the pool bar. I didn’t want to have to sit there waiting for someone who may or may not respond. I didn’t want this to have to continue to feel like a struggle. So I calmed my energy and centered my thoughts on the password, and then BAM, there it was. In my mind. A freaking wifi password. While I was on the toilet.
So I finished my business, got to my phone, typed it in, and IT WORKED. My poop meditation self figured out the freaking wifi password.
I walked back into the kitchen with my mouth agape and looked at my mom, my husband and my daughter, and said “You’re not going to believe what just happened.” We’ve all gotten used to that sentence being followed by some pretty cool shit over the years since I’ve been meditating. I told them the story and they were just as flabbergasted. We put the code into everyone’s devices, and voila we were all set. First-world problem solved.
I have to tell you that as I write this it’s several days later, and I’m still processing what happened. It would be easy to discount it. The password wasn’t that complicated and was actually pretty intuitive. You could say maybe I saw it on the Airbnb check-in info on the app sometime in the days prior to our departure and internalized it (I don’t remember seeing it). And maybe that’s true. Who knows.
But here’s what I do know. No matter how the information found itself in my little brain, I didn’t have access to it in my state of stress and struggle. But the minute I centered and calmed myself and found a vibration of ease and possibility, there it was. Just like that.
I call these moments of synchronicities “miracles” because I believe a miracle is simply a change in perspective. The moment we start seeing things differently, everything changes.
My perspective changed, and I went from internet-poor to internet-rich.
So maybe go ahead and start taking a few centering breaths while you poop and thinking about what a calm, centered, badass, intuitive meditative genius you are. Worked for me.