Moving forward

There are days when I wake up and I just have a knot in my stomach. I have too much to do, too many goals to accomplish, too many things on my mind. I worry about money, I worry about my kids, I worry about my job, I worry about my clients. I worry that I'm not happy enough or grateful enough or thin enough or that my hair is not long enough. I worry about things that matter and things that don't. I worry that all this worrying is making my life pass before me and I am just being carried along, wringing my hands, not fully present, not fully participating.

I have to remind myself, more often than I care to admit, that really, everything is ok. Really, nothing terrible is happening in my life. Really nothing has changed from yesterday. Really, there is no tragedy and there is no great upheaval and there is nothing holding me back or holding me down or holding me hostage; nothing, it seems except my mind and my thoughts and my fear.

There was a time, years ago, when I was a young attorney and newly married and I worried about how my husband I would pay our mortgage. But we did. We continued living our lives and we had children and we moved to a new house, and while our life circumstances changed, my mindset did not. I always worried what would happen if we divorced. I worried how I would make it as a single mom, how my children would hold up, how I would get through each day on my own. I worried about these things and I was happily married, or so I thought. Maybe I was sensing something was not right. I always had that feeling in my stomach that all was not well, but on the outside it seemed everything was fine. It was not. We separated when my children were very young. My fear had come true- I was on my own- a single mom with a 1 year old and 4 year old.

But days went by and somehow I made it through each one. Temper tantrums were weathered, finances were tight and life was scary and I wasn't sure what was going to happen next, but life went on. And after the separation and after the divorce, as my daughters grow up and as my law practice grows and as my hair changes color and my body changes shape, the days continue to pass. Life moves forward- worries or not, gratitude or not, diet or not, gray hair or not, boyfriend or not. And while there are moments when I wonder how I will make it through, somehow I always do. Somehow, as long as we are still here, time will pass whether we want it to or not. Somehow we will find ourselves, years later, still moving forward.

So when I worry and when I wring my hands and when I wonder just how things will work out in the end, I have to remind myself: things rarely work out the way we expected. Sometimes it works out better than we thought and sometimes we are severely disappointed, but all the worry in the world won't make things change in our favor. All the worry in the world won't change who we are or where we're going. All the worry in the world just makes today a sacrifice to what may be tomorrow. And because we cannot know what tomorrow will bring and because we cannot know which worries will come to pass and because we cannot change what will be by worrying about it beforehand, maybe we should just take a breath, and continue on our journey, letting go of it all, letting go of our fear, letting go of our past.

After all, this is the life.
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