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Erin Schaden

Erin Schaden

Just a woman in the world, writing down what I know as I figure it out. Check out www.nakedrandomthoughts.com for more.

“News”

3 min readJun 16, 2026

When I was thinking of what to write this morning, I had a hard time. This has been happening more lately. I am struggling to come up with topics, I mean, I guess that is to be expected…I have been posting almost daily for years. I am verbose, for sure, but even I struggle sometimes. So I decided to check my email before I wrote today, which turned out to be not such a fantastic idea…in my inbox there was, “news.”

My first thought was it was BAD news. But I sat with it awhile and kinda landed on the idea that it is just “news.” I mean it is going to mean that I have to spend time responding to it with no guarantee that it will turn out the way I want, think is fair or right. But right now, it is just a thing. I get to make a choice about how I let it affect me. I get to decide how much bandwidth this inbox item grabs of my morning, my day and my life.

I get to decide.

“News” is going to come. We can’t stop it. Shit goes down and we are just going to have to deal with it. I get to choose how I handle. I get to decide how much of my serenity I give away because of this “news.” It is my decision. Mine, and mine alone.

So this morning, fear crept in and I began immediately drafting a few emails in response to said “news.” But then I paused. I waited. I realized that I do not have to respond RIGHT FUCKING NOW! This is not an immediate thing that has to derail my whole morning routine. I have time. I do not need to scramble. So I paused all the email sending mania and just went back to my morning routine which was already in progress…

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And I realized that once upon a time, I didn’t have the ability to do that. I could not pause. I could not wait, fear owned me. I was launched into action, any action, I just could not sit there with “news” without being compelled into immediate action. Today, I can. And I did.

I will deal with said “news” in a little while. I will handle it and respond, not react. And today, I am incredibly grateful that I have this choice, because I remember all too clearly that I didn’t used to have this ability. It was not part of my repertoire. I had compulsive action based on fear. That is all I had. Today, I have the pause. I have the ability to wait, to reflect and not just react out of impulsive fear and need to get this shit handled.

Today, I pause and wait for God’s will. I allow time for God to enter and trust that I have been taken care of this whole time and I will be taken care of now, also. My job is to pause and create a space for something other than my knee jerk reaction to be in play…

So today, I pause and wait for the intuitive thought or action that will come once I do the next indicated thing which will arrive in God’s time, not mine. In the meantime, I will do what is in front of me and trust that life works out, not always in the way I want, but in the way it is supposed to, which for me, in historical review, is usually way better than I could have imagined…

“News” isn’t bad or good. It is just “news.”

Again, still…

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Erin Schaden
Erin Schaden

Written by Erin Schaden

Just a woman in the world, writing down what I know as I figure it out. Check out www.nakedrandomthoughts.com for more.