This is a gentle reminder to stop, look, and listen.
"Pick me up!" said the stone.
"Why?" I dubiously asked as I stared at it among millions of others on the shore.
In the following moments, I naturally attempted to make sense of the 'why'. In the next noisy minutes, a million thoughts entered my doing mind and my head, now fully engaged, started on its usual analytical path in search of resolve.
'Perhaps I could write on the stone, or make something with the stone. A door stop perhaps? A gift? Or maybe it could sit with my other special stones in the loo? Buy why is it special? It's not particularly pretty, nothing stands out about the stone - it looks like a panini. I don't like paninis. I must stop eating bread...
Chatter. Chatter. Chatter.
Then for a split second, I stopped and got out of my own way. Then as clear as the sunshine in the sky and as lucid as the Mediterranean waters that surrounded me in that moment, I felt and embodied these words as if they were quietly spoken in my ear.
"Hold the stone. Place it in the palm of your poorly hand."
And without a single hesitation - I did.
Somewhere in my cells, I recognised it was the right thing to do. I was to place the stone in the palm of my hand! The hand that I broke two months ago. My right hand. The one I need most. The hand that is painful, achy, stiff, and restricted. The poorly hand that has made me feel sorry for myself, and makes me cry every day during physio. The hand that desperately needs healing.
This stone fitted perfectly in my palm. It nestled into each knuckle like soft cushiony clay. Symmetrical and aligned with its sea-soaked contours, every bump of my hand matched the stone's smooth surface as it sat there wholly, gently and entirely. As if it were moulded that way, just for me.
My fingers wrapped around its silhouette and gently gripped for the first time in two whole months. And I knew, in that moment, that I needed the stone and all that it is. I knew it was going to help me heal. It was a blissful reminder to shut the fuck up because only then, can we truly listen and as I felt the gifts of nature everywhere I knew the universe always has my back - if I allow it of course.
In that quiet moment, nature spoke to me and I respectfully disengaged my mind enough to hear her and receive her gift. And all in the space of five minutes!
I will gratefully work with that stone every day until my hand works as it should again, and until this perfect stone is needed elsewhere.