🛫 Wisdom Wednesday: Open to the Pause
✈️ Finding grace in delays, detours, and airport newsstand non-returnables.
What do you do when life places you in a holding pattern?
This past memorial day and all day yesterday, I spent 36 hours in transit from Oregon to Florida — with an unplanned detour through Colorado, back-to-back flight delays, a six-hour tarmac sit in a grounded plane, and a final leg home without my luggage, which took a vacation of its own… straight to Miami. If you haven’t heard the news of thousands of flight delays over this past memorial day weekend due to severe weather events, now you have.
At one point, I counted 23 flight loads of passengers were crammed into a single baggage claim area. Bags were stacked like a mountain of soft-sided chaos, and the scene was wall-to-wall people. Some passengers waited over four hours just to retrieve a suitcase.
Meanwhile, I was at the newsstand buying the only available outfit in my size — which turned out to be… not my size. At all.
Let’s just say the leggings, once opened, had aspirations to fit an average American adult, and the t-shirt was a reminder that not made-in-USA sizes are not forgiving.
💡 Today’s Corelife Coaching Moment: O is for Open
This is the part of the Corelife Method where most people get uncomfortable.
O – Open – doesn’t mean passive. It doesn’t mean weak.
It means releasing the illusion of control and accepting the invitation of the present moment.
“Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.”
— Romans 12:12
When we’re truly open, we stop fighting what is and begin learning from it.
✅ We trade impatience for empathy.
✅ Frustration for presence.
✅ Tight leggings for humility. (Okay, that one might be just me.)
And we open ourselves to patience, help and miracles.
Of course, I saw frustrated travelers — we all know the ones: sighing loudly, blaming everyone, and creating more stress. But I also saw something else: extraordinary kindness.
Flight attendants going above and beyond.
Strangers offering snacks, charging cords and stories.
Knowing smiles shared between the exhausted.
Open to possibilities. Open to connection. Open to miracles.
In a world bursting at the seams — in airports, inboxes, and our very souls — what if the most radical act is to simply stay open?
🌱 This Week’s Corelife Reflection
Next time you’re stuck — in traffic, in grief, in a tangle of plans gone sideways — try this simple Corelife check-in:
Pause.
Breathe.
Say: “I am open to this moment. I may not like it, but I will not resist it.”
Then unclench your gut and take a deep belly breath and sigh it out. Next, look for the gift. There’s always one.
Even if it comes wrapped in a way too-tight tee and airport leggings that fit like sausage casing. At least I had some kind of pajamas for the night. And by the way, if you purchase gifts at in the airport, go a size up.
Until next time, live the Corelife — centered, open, resilient, and energized.
With love, and an outfit I will donate to a skinny tween,
Anne
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