Rolling Stone Wisdom and a Child's Birth

"You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes...you get what you need." In my youth when I first heard this pearl of wisdom sung by the Rolling Stones, I wasn't sure what it meant, even though I sang the words along with the radio hundreds of times. As this phrase has stuck to me like a mantra swelling up at certain appropriate moments, its truth has only grown clearer to me with time. Now when I perceive a major, life changing earthquake occurring in my life I wonder, "What am I getting that I need? How long will it take me to discover the answer?" Not months, but years, I now realize it will take to have a glimmer of how my life has just changed for the better even though it appears it has all collapsed. I tell myself, if I have the patience of self reflection, over time I might one day know.
  As my grandson came into the world, not through an easy, reasonable length birth but through days of labor; not in the quiet, rural place of his home, but in a third world hospital; not through the planned no drug entry with a midwife, but physically pushed by doctors who snipped away to create a needed earthly entrance to take his first breath; not a peaceful rest in his mother's arms and natural nursing, but a moment together then whisked away to an incubator and formula for twelve hours. "Why this way?", I ask. I have known for years that Nestle pushes formula in the hospitals of third world countries, depriving mothers and babies of the naturally wholesome breast milk and natural suckling in order to sell more formula to uninformed, inexperienced mothers. How could something like this have happened in my family? But it did and being so far away I have to accept what is beyond my grasp. What was the need of my grandson in this situation?
  "There is no one right way to care for a baby, my son reminds me! One does the best they can with less than ideal circumstances. We are all alive and healthy."  He is right, I must concede. I am grateful.
  I harken back to other, 'A ha moments' when I knew it was not earthly control but other worldly wisdom guiding. I had a student some years ago, I will call Nick, who entered the classroom each day slowly, pausing at the doorway, surveying the room quietly, for sometimes what seemed like an eternity for a 4 year old. He watched everyone intently and then at this own pace, slowly, chose a place in the already deeply involved play, to enter in. Soon he was melded into the totally encompassing kindergarten imaginative play life.
  I always knew he saw, was aware of, something that lay beyond what most human beings could perceive. At times he would reveal a glimpse to me. "You are golden," he told me with shining eyes one dark winter day, even though my dress was green.
  Not long after that he told his mother that his sister would come into the world through the dark tunnel even though he could not. (He had been born by Cesarean section. ) His mother did not know in the moment to what he was referring but  a week later she found out she was pregnant. Nine months later her daughter was born through natural childbirth and did indeed, come down the 'dark tunnel' birth canal. When she told me this story I knew it was true, even our birth is what we need not what our parents might want, imagine, and prepare.
  Since then I have had numerous opportunities to surrender to the gift of greater wisdom and my need. It was not my wants that came to be when my first husband left me for another woman or when it came to the ill experienced, troubled teacher my child would get in school or the beloved jobs I would lose or gain. My choice would not have allowed for the exploration of another journey path in life or the deep inner growth that came from these challenging life experiences. These were not choices I would have made consciously in those moments but were thrust upon me and became a gift over time. In those moments when I was pushed kicking and screaming to a new way of seeing life, another pearl of life wisdom would jump to the forefront of my mind, "All things work together for good, to them who love God."
  "OK, show me,' is my trust-less inner response still whispered after so many years of being shown, but it is not as loud as it used to be.