Give Up and You Shall Get

By Stephanie Marston


At the end of my daughter's senior year in high school, we decided to take a trip to the island in British Columbia where she was born. Neither of us had been back since she, her father and I had left some 16 years earlier.

Shortly after we arrived, we visited an old friend who's a jeweller. When she noticed me admiring one of her chrysanthemum rocks, she offered to make me a piece of jewellery if I found the right stone while on the island.

From that moment on I was on a quest. Every time I went for a walk I would scour the beach. I must have picked up several hundred stones. After days of intensive hunting I began to notice that I had become obsessed with finding "the perfect rock".

Without having realised it, I had gotten to the point where I was no longer enjoying myself. In fact, I was making myself miserable. Here I was in this idyllic setting and I felt as stressed out as I was in Los Angeles. I had become so driven to find a keepsake of our trip that I was missing the actual experience. I called off my search and for the first time since arriving I began to feel like I was on vacation.

A few days later I ran into an old friend who invited me to go on a picnic. We rode our bikes to a deserted beach. As we lay on our stomachs at the water's edge, I suddenly notices something tickling my palm. I looked down and there was a jet black stone with a perfectly formed circle etched on it's oval surface. The stone was exactly the right size for my ring finger. I was speechless. I had let go, given up and having expended no effort, I had found the very thing I had been looking for.

I began to think about how fear had driven much of my life. My self-assured veneer had camouflaged how truly frightened I had been - frightened that if I didn't push, nothing would happen.

Perhaps, after this experience, I could loosen my grip and allow myself to be carried more by life. Perhaps it was time to get my ego out of the way and allow something deeper to motivate me. Perhaps it was time top listen to a voice that has always existed, but one to which I had only intermittently listened. Perhaps it was time to allow the wisdom of my authentic self to be more present in my life - to heed the truth that I knew to be correct, but had too often ignored.

Since that experience I began to practise trusting whenever, wherever, however I found an opportunity. Each time we choose to trust - and it's not always easy - our faith grows incrementally stronger. On those occasions when I feel fear rising in the pit of my stomach, I glance down at my ring as a concrete reminder of what's possible for each of us when we open ourselves and surrender.

Sent to Starmag by Tan Hock Ang