Unexpected incomes and a lesson from the Universe
Bartender's wisdom... or is it?
My dear beloved customers,
If I tell you that God works in mysterious ways and sometimes misfortunes are just blessings in desguise, that wouldn’t be the statement of the century and yet, I’m still learning it, somehow, the hard way.
Let me tell you the last lesson in the matter I received from the Universe. At the end of last August, when I was on vacation in one of my favorite spots in France, I received an email from the french national employment agency telling me they were suspicious about my former employee status and, in a nutshell, were accusing me of fraud.
To evaluate my position, they sent me a link to fill an online form and send it to them. Meanwhile, they suspended my allowance. I thus took one afternoon out of the beach to fill out the form and get it over with asap though I was very angry at being accused of cheating in the first place.
One problem occured though: in order to validate the form and send it, I had to tick one of the four boxes of a compulsory question, all incriminating and false, and then certify all my answers were conform to the truth. If I didn’t, I couldn’t validate the form. So, I sent a first claim to the agency to explain what my problem was and ask them to offer me another solution for me to send them the infos they needed to restore my allowance. The exchanges went back and forth during the whole month of September. Their answer, when they answered, was always the same: fill out the form, sign it electronically and send it.
My messages were thrown against a deaf wall and were getting me angrier and angrier. I got so mad that, at one point, I had to ask myself what I was so mad about and where that anger was in fact coming from. The first answer I got was that I found the whole situation so unfair I actually reacted as a kid wrongly accused of something he hadn’t done. I was hurt, appalled and a little bit sulking as well.
But there was something else lurking underneath the surface: my relationship to money. We all have a very weird relationship to money, some more peaceful than others, because it is definitely one of the most important and lasting relationships of our lives. To make it simple, mine is very ordinarily based on a fear of lack, tremendously linked to my parents’ own way to relate to money though it presents itself very differently for my mom and for my dad, an inner value scale for my mom always told me I would never be worthy enough to earn good money on my own and a very powerful tool for emotional blackmail and control over me on my mother’s part as well. So needless to say that money has always been a great issue for me.
The thing is, I had a very interesting month of September on that matter, as though the Universe was trying to make me understand something quite loudly for it knows I can be a little stone deaf or too lost in my thoughts sometimes to notice important things. So, when I was coming back from my vacation, I had resolved myself to balance my finances and be very careful concerning my budget for we had spent a lot of our savings lately and both my husband and I are currently out of a job, both working on new projects that are not likely to bring money home quickly unless a divine intervention occur, always counting on that one though.
Ten days after we were back, everything was under control and though the money was very tight, my mother had sent us an unexpected thousand Euros, indeed not her style at all, that were generously covering for my daughter’s school expenses for she was starting Junior High School in a new private school and buying me time to sort out my unemployed allowance issue. Or so I thought…
A few days after receiving that gift, I received a very unexpected electricity arrear bill of 1 250 €. I knew then that the Universe had sent me those 1 000 € in advance to cover most of it - that wasn’t the first time it did so - and I was as grateful as angry and disappointed that that unexpected income was forced out of my hands that quickly. I found an arrangement with my electricity provider to fragment my debt and make a payment each month until December. I was quite satisfy with that and it helped me keep my budget balanced. Anger had come and gone and I could go on with my life again. Or so I thought…
The very next day, I received an email from another small purchase I had made on an online store for which I had applied to pay in four instalments and there were three ones left. The problem was that my credit card had expired after the first one and I had to enter my new one on my account which I did. But there was a bug in the system and each time the instalment payment was submitted, it occured on the expired credit card and the new one instantly disappeared from my account. So I made a claim to customer support and ask them for a solution; over and over again for two weeks, they kept telling me that everything was fine and that the next attempt would be OK. The thing is that, starting with the third attempt, they started adding late fees to my debt and only proposed a solution after my fees had reached 12 €. At last, I was asked to transfer the all amount and forced to pay the 12 € though they were not due to any fault of mine. I let you imagine how angry I had become, spending days sending emails to try and fix the situation and get my money back, a feat I couldn’t achieve.
Of course, that anger kept nourishing my still going on exchanges with the french national employment agency. I was litteraly blinded by my anger at the unfairness of the situation, trying to pull things in the right direction, mine of course, at the fact that I had no control over the situation and feared I would have to get going without my allowance, guilty or not. I had started rearranging my budget and looking for ideas for new possible incomes following that last pessimistic “what if” perspective - When do we ever imagine positive “what ifs” by the way?
Nevertheless, the little voice inside my head was telling me: stop struggling, let go and submit. Who cares what they think for you know you haven’t done anything wrong and that allowance was honestly earned? But nope, I just kept on fighting as though my life depended on that form rather than on my allowance.
But I so didn’t want to lie, especially a lie that was increminating me with something I hadn’t done. Lying is a big deal to me because I used to lie a lot to my mother when I was a teenager and a young adult to escape her control upon my life and to be able to do what I wanted or needed to do in accordance to who I was rather than who she wanted me to be and that’s a very painful period of my life.
But each time I was sending a new message to the agency, I felt in my body that I was in fact resisting to something I was supposed to do and felt as though I were in Star Trek Next Generation, captured by the Borgs telling me that all resistance is futile and that I’m going to be assimilated. In this version, assimilation was asked by the Universe for my own good and, deep down, I knew it was but I kept fighting nonetheless because, hey, fighting is what I’ve always done in those kind of unfair situation, the only response I know: fighting back when attacked. This is probably why I would be one of the first eaten by zombies if I were a character in “Walking Dead”, stupidly fighting to death rather than trying to survive.
So, I kept resisting until early October when I knew I had no other choice but to answer that frigging question to get my allowance back. Reluctantly, I ticked the only box that allowed me to write a comment in which I stated that none of the possible answers to that particular question was true in my case and I had documents to prove it that were attached to the form. I submit, painfully, and let go.
The following week, I received an official email telling me that everything was in order and that my status and allowance had been restored. I thus went to see when they were going to transfer me the money and, to my astonishment, the amount that appeared on my screen had been upgraded of 700 €. In fact, all that fuss was a way for the Universe to send me a new unexpected income that wasn’t to cover for an unexpected debt this time. And I resisted it with all my strength for my fear of what was to come next was more vivid than my faith that only something good was to be expected, that the Universe had my back, everytime.
It thus occured to me that my soul lesson for September was not really about money, it is about trust. Interestingly, I had a session about money with my kinesiology mentor at the end of that month and one of the topic that popped up on that issue was indeed trust. One of the main reason money has difficulty penetrating my life is that I don’t trust I’m worthy enough to earn money and I don’t trust the Universe to fulfill my every needs, to be on my side. And the message the Universe sent me was quite clear and powerful: “Trust that I have your back and that you are worthy of all the money in the world. There is no lack. Stop fighting for life is neither a war nor a struggle, it’s an adventure so let go of your fears, replace them by faith and curiosity and everything will be alright. See, everything is alright just now.”
Quite a September month! Gee, I wonder what October has in store for me apart from my birthday!
Please let me know in the comments if your September was as bumpy as mine or if you too had quite a lesson from the Universe lately.
Bartendingly yours with lots of love,
Geay
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Life, the Universe and Everything Playlist
Educational September!!!!
Yes! A bumpy road the past couple months and a lot of lessons around money, resistance, trust, and receiving. We have so much to personally and planetarily clear on this subject. And money is only one concentrated form of resources. To our little inner children the most vital resources are love, safety, and positive regard. So no wonder all these wounds are being lifted into view ❤️