Learning to breathe

My oldest daughter got her driver's license the other day. And while I sat at home and calculated the amount of time it would take her to get from the ice cream store back home and began counting the minutes, I realized I was holding my breath. Just as I had when she was born and came home from the hospital and I wondered how I would ever sleep (because I thought if I fell asleep and didn't watch her every minute, she might stop breathing). Funny how time brings you back to the same feelings years later. Funny how we hold our breath to try to make it through uncertainty.


And I think it's the same with any major change we have in our life, really. We fall in love and wonder if we will do something wrong to have it end.  We have a parent die and we wonder how we will manage to make it through. We have our marriage end and we wonder how we will ever get through the next week never mind the rest of our lives.


Yet somehow we do. Somehow times moves on and so do we. Somehow the days pass and we find ourselves in a new routine, in a new space, in a new mindset. Somehow we remember to breathe, we remember to laugh, we remember how to provide for ourselves. Because life is like that- providing us with moments that take our breath away and following with moments that sustain us.  Life is a way for us to experience fear and yet not let it consume us. Life is a path for us to appreciate that even after sadness, happiness is sure to eventually follow. Life is a series of holding our breath and letting it go.


Lesson learned.
-a

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