Adversity and Leveling Up

When you are playing a game and you successfully complete a level, what happens?  You GET to go to a new level with an additional or new challenge.  Lucky you!  Your earned that!  

I recently had a situation where this is how I decided to see it.  I earned this new challenge to see how I can implement the tools that I have and rest in the peace that is quite easily found when things are going favorably.

This episode I share that challenge and encourage you to look at your adversity as a new level that is meant to challenge you to grow and expand.  When you meet the challenge with patience and presence and yes, even gratitude it will be much easier to conquer the new obstacles on your peaceful path.

Transcript

Rise and shine, everybody. It's time to wake up with Susan. Spiritual awakening can be a beautiful, messy, and sometimes lonely journey.

So let's do it together. I'm your host, Susan Sutherland. I'm an intuitive healer and spiritual mentor. 

We are all called to rise up above our conditioning and limiting beliefs and shine our light on ourselves and others. So let's get to it. Hi family, thanks for tuning in this week. 

This week, I'm going to tell you what I planned for last week and then got kind of sidetracked wanting to let you know that Connection to Spirit is available to you. But this week, I want to tell you a story about adversity or kind of a hiccup that happened in my life and how I got through it by seeing it as a new level. So it's about leveling up and kind of viewing, changing the perspective of how you view challenges instead of like, oh God, this terrible thing is happening to me, switching it to see it as, okay, I'm in a new level. 

So this is what happened is Mark and I decided to let our oldest go away for the weekend. He was a camp counselor, not a counselor, a counselor-in-training at a camp near us for a month this past summer and, you know, became very close with the other counselors-in-training that were there with them this four weeks together. They became good friends and earlier in the summer, one of the girls said she was gonna have a Labor Day party. 

Most of the kids are either from Charlotte or from the Atlanta area and so she was gonna have a party and the Charlotte friends were gonna go to Atlanta to visit the friends in Atlanta and go to this party. So initially, big boy who had a July birthday was thinking he would have his license and be driving to Atlanta, but that's because he has never driven or even, I mean, he's been to Atlanta, so he has been through the traffic, but clearly has no idea that driving in Atlanta is like a whole different beast than regular driving and would not be suitable for the child from Charlotte who just got their license. Well, turned out that he still had to have his permit for another month before he was even eligible, so he didn't have his license. 

So that wasn't even an option. Also, I don't really, I not, I don't really know, I don't know these children at all that he is going with. I know they've been vetted by Camp Thunderbird, which is reassuring, but I neither trust their driving skills in Atlanta if they grew up in Charlotte anymore than I would trust his. 

So driving was not an option. However, he is a junior in high school. He doesn't ask to do a whole lot. 

He hasn't, you know, gone to parties and stuff like that. We live in Charlotte. He goes to school in Gastonia.

He really loves to go to gym and crumble or chipotle with his best friend. That is kind of his, his social activities and, you know, hanging out with his gym bros or whatever. And so I did want to make it happen for him to go to this party because, you know, he really doesn't ask to do a whole bunch. 

But Mark and I were going to the U.S. Open. This is when we were going. So Mark, it's funny because Dashiell was talking to me about this the whole time we were traveling when we were away. 

And I had told him my thoughts on it that I would allow him to go. I was really hoping initially that Mark would take Brecken. He owes him a father-son weekend. 

I was thinking they could go camping near Atlanta and just drive Dashiell there and then they'd be close by. But that didn't work out. And, and so anyway, he had kind of gotten the clear from me, but had not gotten the clear yet from Mark about this weekend. 

And I was not going to do his dirty work for him. You know, everybody's like, Mom, have you talked to Dad about this? Or, or Mom, I wanted to ask you about this. Well, you know, you can ask me, but you also have to get clearance from him. 

And I think that's a conversation you, you need to have. Well, these dudes drove home from freaking Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and he gets here and I'm like, did you talk to your dad about Labor Day? No, it just didn't come up. Well, it didn't come up because you didn't bring it up, but y'all were in the car for 29 hours and somehow it didn't come up. 

And that's called avoidance. And I know all about it. But anyway, so I said, guys, y'all have to figure this out. 

A decision has to be made because we were trying to decide if we were going to the U.S. Open. This is a really long story before I even get to what happened, but I'm laying the groundwork here. So Mark took over and, and said, you'll have my permission. 

However, I'm going to need a list of where you will be, um, that child's name, their parents' name, the parents' phone numbers, because I'm going to call the, the parents and just kind of double check all of this. And so, um, he decided that he would approve this and got Daschle a flight out of Charlotte at, at nearly the same time that we were flying to New York. So we picked him up from school and we went to the airport together, went through, you know, security check and then said goodbye to him. 

And he went to his gate. Now he has traveled a great deal and feels really comfortable in the airport. That was no problem. 

Like he got through security on his own because his ticket was booked separately and he didn't have pre-check. Bye. Um, but we saw him on the other side, had a early dinner with him and then sent him to his gate. 

And then we went two hours and, and so we land in New York and I just wanted to check on him. So I sent him a text and was like, Hey, are you good? And he responded, no, my flight was canceled. Now that is something he would normally say as a way to, you know, joke around with me. 

And I just let him know that this weekend that I'm in New York and he's in Georgia is not an appropriate time for him to be making jokes like that. Like, dude, we're not doing that this weekend. And he responded, no, really mom, my flight was canceled. 

I'm at the airport. Lord y'all. All right. 

So what happens then is a string of cancellations, delays. It was storming here. Initially he was, um, put onto another flight that was different than his friends. 

And so while we were in the car in Manhattan, going to our hotel, Mark has, you know, high status, whatever it is, gold, platinum, whatever it is with American airlines. And so he called his number where he can get through and talk to somebody quicker than Dashiell would be able to get to the front of the counter, um, at the airport. And so he called and was able to get Dashiell onto the flight with his buddies. 

They would now fly out instead of at 540, they're going to fly out at 830 and all is well, right? Sure. But it had my little mama heart going. Like I have flown to another state and my 16 year old is now stranded at an airport. 

And I had to really have a talk with myself. This is not a catastrophe. I've hit a new level. 

This is a new level for me. And unfortunately, you guys, you guys have are not sitting around playing Fortnite. So when I give you my Super Mario Brothers gaming reference, I hope you'll be like, yes, that is a reference that resonates with me because I don't have any new, I don't have new references to give you unless I can think of what those candy crush little bombs are called. 

But anyway, so when you get through a level on Super Mario Brothers, your reward is a harder level, right? You crushed the level. You win all your points. And then your reward for getting this new level is that now instead of just pipes coming up from the ground, there's pots with piranhas that occasionally come up looking to bite your feet and kill you. 

Like that is your reward for success. And so I'm sitting in the cab and I'm thinking, okay, I've hit a new level. And my new level involves my teenage child traveling for the first time by himself without his family. 

And he is stranded at an airport. Like this is an interesting new level. And by taking that approach, I took the mom panic out of the situation. 

And I thought, okay, let's see how we're going to deal with this. Because let me tell you a couple of the facts about the situation. I could not change where I was. 

I could not change. I could change where he was. And fortunately, we had prior to leaving added Uber and Lyft to his account in case he needed it while he was in Atlanta. 

He could go with his friends. We explained how to use that. We put a credit card on his phone to use. 

We had done a few mitigation tasks, not seeing that something like this would happen. But I felt good that worse comes to worse, he could Uber home where my sister was with my other kids or she could go pick him up. And so there were certain things that were reassuring that I just, you know, here's the deal. 

He's comfortable at the airport. He is with friends. He is not freaking out.

He has another flight he can get on. He has a home he can go to. Airport personnel typically are kind to minors. 

You know, I'm just kind of going through the Rolodex of if I had to find a bright spot, what would it be? And that's where I allowed my focus to be first. Let's find all the ways that this is a better situation than it could be. First of all, that it's Daschle and not my middle child who really, really would have been freaking out at this time. 

And I would have been freaking out on her behalf knowing how stressful this would be for her. But with Daschle, it was like he's hanging out with his friends and it has gotten to be inconvenient. But beyond that, I mean, he had not even texted us to let us know that the flight had been canceled and we had been not with him for two hours. 

I had to check on him to even find out that this had happened because he was fairly casual about it. So I went through my Rolodex of the good things about this situation. And then I reminded myself of how I cannot change it. 

I cannot undo him going. I can't undo this flight and me sitting here panicking about it was not going to help. Third of all, I thanked God a hundred thousand times that somehow in all of the parenting situations, I can promise you that this is the very, very first time that Mark Sutherland has been on the group text with other parents and not me. 

But I cannot think of a better moment for me to not be the mediator between what is going on and and the parents in Atlanta and the other parents of the children at the airport. I surrendered to the fact that he would handle it. He's in contact with these other parents and somehow it was divine intervention that I did not have to be on that group text because I think like swirling in it would have allowed my anxiety to go up more than trusting that he was taking care of it, that everybody was in the loop. 

And I'm telling you, you guys, I was able to stay calm by realizing I've just hit a new level. The the piranhas are coming up and I can either act quickly and jump straight into those biting teeth or I can take a breath. I can wait on it to go down and make my next step, right? So, so we're good. 

He now has a seat on the 830 with his friends. Good to go, right? Until 835 when I get the the text in the email that the flight is delayed and then canceled and then the new flight is assigned and it's delayed and canceled and we're talking about this going on until midnight, right? My kid is still at the airport eight hours later from when we left him, has been on one plane for two hours before they cancel it, send him off the plane and then reassign him a new plane. But it's going back and forth and and we're relying on people in Atlanta. 

He's now going to be getting there at 2 30 in the morning for them to pick him up, all right? So anyway, what I'm telling you is this was a complete disaster of a situation. But I'm telling you that the way I was able to handle it is just acknowledging that this is it's a new level of parenting. Did y'all ever play Excitebike? If our kids saw Excitebike and and the absolute garbage graphics that we had to use when we were when we were growing up, it would blow their mind. 

But this is an oil slick. You got through the level that had the two ramps and now you get an oil slick to go around and that's what this was. And so I just really wanted to share the story with you because it allowed me to keep a piece that I don't think would normally have been available for me by seeing it as, okay, I was ready to be challenged in a new way because this definitely was that. 

It was definitely a challenge for me to communicate with my sister who I'm telling, hey, just leave the spare key out if he ends up having to get a ride back to the house. And, you know, with Mark communicating with these other parents who are hosting them, I mean, goodness gracious for this man who who picked them up at 2 30 in the morning with a car full of snacks because he knew these boys would be starving after their their day at the airport and then took them home and and he had a wonderful weekend and everything worked out. But it was just it was such a reminder that things aren't going to be smooth just because you are doing this work or are a good parent or have good kids or whatever. 

Like these bumps are what keeps things interesting. These bumps are how you challenge the work that you're doing. Like when you say you have, you know, kind of found a calmness, found an inner peace and you're sitting in a cave all the time. 

Do you know that you have had that? Or do you need your kids stranded at an airport to be like, okay, this is a doozy. Can I stay really calm through this? And I was able to and I don't say that requesting harder material to work through. I really want y'all to to understand that some of these bumps in the road are just for us to to really have a kind of a hand on the pulse of how we're doing. 

How is your mindset and how are you able to use the tools? It's one thing to use gratitude to just start your day because it's every other day. And it's another thing to use gratitude because your family is really in a situation right now. And to start with the things that I was really grateful for was very helpful in processing that situation and getting through it. 

So that is just what I wanted to share with you this week. It was to see your adversity as an opportunity to level up, to see what's working for you and maybe fine tune the tools that you're using and check in on the skills that you have. We're doing this work. 

We are, you know, using our meditation and our journaling and our gratitude as practices so that when we have these adversities, we are able to feel calm in the storm. And so when you're in the storm, really, really dial into those practices and find that calm because we don't get to drive around it. You know, you don't get to drive around the hiccups that this life brings. 

We're here for the hiccups. We're here for these challenges. And so it's really important to not be frustrated and say, I'm doing this work. 

Why does this happen? This is the worst day ever. Oh my gosh. Everything's out of my control. 

Blah, blah, blah, blah. And to kind of spin. It's like, ooh, all right. 

I see what we've got here. Let me start with my gratitude. And then, you know, really just find calm. 

And it is one of those where, you know, anxiety is kind of panicking about things that are out of your control. And so it's really honing in on what am I in control of right now? What are the parts of this situation that I can impact at all? And that happened to be contact with the other groups, making sure Mark was in contact with the families, that Dashiell felt calm, which he did. And I just checked in with him and he's like, no, I'm good. 

We're going to get something to eat. Or he felt really good about being there with his friends. That worked out amazingly. 

And being in contact with my sister who was here with my kids and just kind of keeping her updated in case another kid dropped in on them at one in the morning. But it was just such an opportunity to put the tools to work and to really see where I am at in, you know, being able to find calm in the storm. So I invite you to do that too. 

As you've got these hiccups, because life's going to give Life is going to give you hiccups. Really allow yourself to see it as just an opportunity to test your practices and your ability to stay present in the moment, to focus on the aspects of the situation that you have control of and kind of surrender the rest. We can ask for help. 

We can certainly pray for help. But when you allow your mind to go to the what-ifs, when you allow the anxiety and the panic to take over, you lose your peace and really don't contribute anything else to anything. So that's what I wanted to tell you. 

That was my funny story, which was not funny at all. It was not funny. And bless Mark's heart, I think I fell asleep. 

I fell asleep after Dashiell's plane had taken off. Mark set an alarm to wake back up when his plane would be arriving to check in on him when he had landed and when he had gotten to the home. So I am so blessed and grateful that he was able to take that part of the role because in addition to it being on my plate would have been more stressful. 

Also, your girl needs sleep and I think not having sleep and having that anxiety on my plate would have just been well, I don't know. But it really worked out and I was so grateful that his first time ever on a parent group chat was so perfectly timed for me to just be like, okay, I'm going to keep calm and you deal with this because he would be more inclined to be calm about it anyway. And so that worked out. 

So all right, everybody, I hope that helps. You know, as things come up, as they will, they are going to come up. We are here to learn and grow and expand and know ourselves in a more beautiful way. 

And you know yourself the best when you are experiencing challenges and adversity. And so I really hope this will help you shift your perspective a little bit and say, okay, all right, I've hit a new level. How am I going to deal with this? Thank you so much for listening. 

Thanks for sharing with a friend if they need this message. I'll see you again next week. Hey friends, it only takes a second to leave a five star rating.

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Have a great week.