Welcome to The Daily Ascent. I'm Molly Carmel, and this is the podcast I always wish existed, a bite-sized, on-the-ground, spiritual note that can shift your thinking and your outlook on life to help make us all a little bit more awake, alive, and ascending. So today's pod is a part two. So if you've been listening, I think like two days ago, you know that my beloved 75-pound lab mix, absolute best friend, most joyful sentient being I have ever had the privilege of knowing, dog, Danny, had surgery.
And I want to give you a little update on that because something happened in this recovery process that's just sort of like stopped me in my tracks and made me think about my own life in a way that I really wasn't expecting. So Danny's surgery went so well, little trooper, and I'm so relieved and grateful and all the things. But you know, he had surgery on all four of his legs, and he has to be on bed rest for two weeks. And I mean, our life is busy, and we are on trails, and we're going places, and we're walking, and we're jumping, and we're on beds.
I mean, it's a whole vibe over here. He is honestly the most full of life creature that I've ever encountered. And it makes me a better person. This dog wakes up like it's Christmas every morning.
He's just like excitement and joy and chaos just wrapped in black fur that sheds everywhere. And now, you know, he's living downstairs because he's not allowed to do stairs. He's always on a leash. He's actually with me right now.
And you know, we have this beautiful backyard that usually it's like I open the door and he runs out and sees like where the squirrel is and where the bird is and he's smelling and it's so cute. And now he has to go on a leash out there too. We're not going on walks or certainly not running trails. And he's a little sedated, so he's really out of it.
And I think, though, obviously I don't know this for sure because he's a dog and he can't tell me, but we're pretty spiritually connected. But I think he's super confused by all of this. I mean, certainly, you know, his life is so different and he probably doesn't understand that or why the things that he loves has been taken away and you know why everything feels smaller and slower and wrong. Or maybe that's my human emotion, that last one.
And honestly, watching him navigate that confusion, something really hit me. Something spiritual really hit me because if I'm honest, like, I kind of know that feeling. Like, I know what it's like when life suddenly doesn't look the way I thought it's supposed to, right? When things I think are supposed to be happening and unveiling aren't, you know, when things I had are gone all of a sudden or things that I want are like super far away when I'm not getting what I think I should be getting and like nothing makes sense.
But, you know, here's what Danny doesn't know. And here's what I forget all of the time. I mean, he's not being punished right now. Like he's not, it's not a punishment that he can't go on long walks.
It's protection. He shouldn't be running through that backyard right now because he just had surgery on all four of his legs. The leash is love, right? It's not a limitation.
This smaller world that I've had to put him in isn't a demotion. It's a recovery room. And so, and so I really started to wonder this, like how many times in my life have I been Danny, right? How many times have I been confused and frustrated and raging against the leash, not realizing that the leash was the thing that was keeping me safe.
Like being enraged that I wasn't let upstairs when going upstairs would have injured me or harmed me or I wasn't ready to go upstairs, right? I was still healing. And so this brings me to our pocket stage today on Ray Nguyen. I think it's on Ray.
I call him on Ray and he is a Dutch Catholic priest and one of the most beloved spiritual writers in the 20th century. He was a teacher at Harvard and Yale, and then he actually left that community to go live with, um, in a community of people with intellectual disabilities. And he said that was like the most profound work he ever did. And this is what he writes.
When I trust deeply that today God is truly with me and holds me safe in a divine embrace guiding every one of my steps, I can let go of my anxious need to know how tomorrow will look or what will happen next month or next year. I can be fully where I am and pay attention to the many signs of God's love within me and around me. Now friends, this is a beautiful writing. And so if you're getting taken away or pulled away by the word God, just replace it with whatever you use for your higher being universe, higher power, love, like you do you.
I'm going to read it again for those of you in the back and for those of you distracted by the use of the word God. So he writes, when I trust deeply that today God is truly with me and holds me safe in a divine embrace guiding every one of my steps, I can let go of my anxious need to know how tomorrow will look or what will happen next month or next year. I can be fully where I am and pay attention to the many signs of God's love within me and around me. And I mean, that's Danny on his leash, right?
And that's Danny not being able to go upstairs and not being able to play ball. Like he doesn't know what tomorrow looks like. He doesn't know that in about, I don't know, probably like 28 days that the plan will be very different, right? He doesn't understand the plan, but he's being held in a divine embrace.
Even if to him, it just feels like a really boring Tuesday in his bed in my office or on the couch. Right. And so our word of the day today is held, you know, it's really the word that I keep coming back to when I'm watching Danny navigate this recovery. Like he doesn't know he's being held.
He just knows that things are different and he doesn't like it. But the truth is every limitation that he has on him right now is an act of love. Every boundary that I have to hold in place is protection. And every boring, frustrating, confusing moment is part of his healing process.
And my gosh, I think that's true for so many of us. Like we're in seasons of our lives where things feel restricted, where the world feels smaller or scarier than we want it to be, where we're not getting what we think we should be getting. And we make it to believe that something is wrong. But what if it just means that we're being held?
Like what if this confusion is actually God's hand, the universe's hand care? Like, what if this leash that we feel like we're on is actually love? Because I don't know, like being held does not always feel like a warm hug. Sometimes it feels like a really restrictive leash and it feels like being stuck, right?
And sometimes it feels like everything you want is on the other side of a door that you can't get opened yet or on a staircase that has a gate that you that you can't jump over, right? But being held is being held whether you can feel it or not. And you know, we spend so much of our lives fighting against things that are probably trying to protect us, right? We rage against limitations.
We resent slowness, right? We're so we're so impatient. We interpret every closed door as a rejection instead of a redirection. Don't you love that one?
And, you know, Danny doesn't know that his surgery was a success. He doesn't even know why he had that surgery, right? And he doesn't know that in two weeks we'll be going on really short five minute walks, but then 10 minute walks, but then 15 minute walks, right? And he'll be running again and much better than before.
He doesn't know any of that. He just knows that things are confusing and different. And maybe if dogs have deep feelings like this, which I think they do, maybe he thinks they're wrong. I've been there.
But what if Danny could zoom out all of us, right? What if he could see that every single restriction is in service of his healing and that the leash is temporary and that this small world that he's living in is building towards a bigger one. And you know, this reading says that when we trust deeply, not casually, but deeply and not intellectually, by the way, but deeply that we are being held. We can let go of our anxious need to know how tomorrow will look.
We can stop trying to figure out the plan and just trust where we are. And I don't know about you, but I'm incredibly bad at that. Like incredibly bad at that. Like I just want to know the plan.
I just want to see the document and maybe like redline it and give it back to the universe with some suggestions, right? I really want someone to explain to me exactly why my life looks this way right now. And I want to know the exact second it's going to change. But you know, this experience with Danny is really teaching me something because he doesn't have the blueprint and he doesn't understand the plan.
And I know he's being held because I'm, you know, I'm the holder and he's healing and he's loved. And sometimes the most spiritual thing that we can do is stop pulling against the leash and trust that whoever is holding it is doing it in love and protection and healing. And so my reflective question for you today, what are you fighting right now that might actually be protecting you? And you know, I am right here with you Ascenders, learning from my sweet 75 pound Labrador that being held doesn't always look the way we think it should.
And listen, if this episode