just keep swimming...

The other day, my little sister’s best friend posted this as her facebook status. I’m not usually one to refer to cartoons for life mantras, but it was strangely just what I needed to hear. ..a reminder of the only thing I can really do. Just keep swimming.

This week was a tough one for us. The financial reality of not having a job truly began to set in. Michael got an offer for a great job on Monday, which was promptly revoked a couple of hours later due to the fact that his step-brother works for the same company, and it violates their nepotism policy. (For the record, everyone that was a part of Michael’s interview process was aware of the situation and assured him that being step-brothers didn’t count as immediate family.) Anyway, there are no hard feelings toward the company or anyone involved…It just felt like having the rug put back under us and then ripped out again. It was a punch in the gut after everything else that has happened, and it took us a little while to get over.

Inevitably, it just seems to have been another little lesson for us. Patience and Faith. Patience and Faith. Patience and Faith. I repeat these things to myself when I feel panic or frustration starting to rise, and only after Monday did I realize that I haven’t been truly giving myself over to either patience or faith. It isn’t enough to cling to the ideas of patience and faith to help myself through this. I have to learn them. I have to practice them. I have to focus on WHAT THEY REALLY MEAN. And that’s hard.

I’m learning right now that patience doesn’t mean calming down or waiting for answers that will shortly present themselves to me. It’s not enough to have patience for a few days or a few weeks. We are making changes here…life changes. The answers to the questions that create life changes take time. I’m learning that I can’t expect my husband to decide how he wants to go about starting his career over in a few weeks. I’m learning that I can’t expect him to go about things the way I do. I’m learning that he needs the time to really look within himself and figure things out. These transitions we are going through aren’t set on a timeline like I wish they were. So I’m having a baby in a few months. That doesn’t mean we have a deadline. Babies are born into all sorts of crazy situations and everything turns out fine. This baby will be fine…and loved…and happy. What else really matters? Learning to have patience is hard for a control freak because it means giving up control (or at least the illusion of control). Relinquishing control is a daily (hourly) struggle for me, but I’m working on it. And sometimes I fail completely. But sometimes I don’t. This next week, I’m going to focus on harnessing this type of patience and letting it keep me afloat. I’m going to focus on NOT struggling against the tide.



And then there’s faith. This is a really hard one for me. Fundamentally, I believe in individual autonomy. To an extent, I believe that I control what happens to me. If I work hard, I am much closer to achieving what I want than if I just wait for it. This is how I’ve lived my entire life, and I think I’ve situated faith in a strange place. I have faith in what I have control (or the illusion of control) over. I have faith in the ultimate human good. I have faith that being a good person is always for the best. It has always been really hard for me to have faith that things would just work out for the best. Obviously, things don’t always work out for the best. People fail. People die. Tragedies happen. Good people don’t always have good lives. So there’s no point in believing that everything will turn out great. Maybe it will and maybe it won’t. That’s always always been my perspective on things. But I’m beginning to realize that I’ve left something out of that equation. Maybe things don’t always turn out for the best, but (and I do believe this) things always turn out how they are supposed to. Every single hard thing I’ve ever gone through has shaped me. Whether I fight it or struggle for control over it or wallow in my frustration with it, the universe always wins. It always finds a way to teach me what I’m in desperate need of learning. The faith that I’m searching for means that I need to relax and let the universe do what it’s going to do. Things will turn out exactly how they are supposed to without my overanalyzing and scrutinizing over every single decision. There is no use for all my worry and fear. One way or another, what is going to be will be. I just have to let it. This week, I’m going to focus on the faith that helps me let things be.

My sister in law is an elementary school teacher, and she once quoted from a book she’d read to her class: “Today was a bad day; Tomorrow will be better.”

So, after a long, hard, emotionally draining week, I’m going to spend the next few days focusing on the lessons I’ve learned from Disney movies and children’s books. I’m going to keep swimming toward a better tomorrow. I’m going to let go of today’s pains and move forward. I’m going to find the inner peace to let the universe shape me, reminding myself every moment that life isn’t about the jobs we have or the money we make. Life is about becoming who we are supposed to be, and this day’s challenge is just a step leading us in that direction.