I’m not stagnant; I’m just catching my breath.

A wise woman reiterated these words to me recently.  I’d heard them before, but benefited from their run through my ears once more.  And probably will again someday.

Two Christmases ago, my mother presented me with a framed quote from Jodi Hills.

She wasn’t where she had been,

she wasn’t where she was going,

but she was on her way.

Though at times like this, when I’m walking in my sweats through the land of sinus fog after days of leading my children out of it, and I feel like I’m in some sort of stasis, I am not the person I was a few years ago.  My cynical, smart-ass, survive-with-laughter self says, that’s for sure.  And there are a good number of negatives with what I’ve experienced over the last three to four years.  But after being so low, I was able to honestly assess to which heights I wanted to rise.  And how to get there.  And how to push myself despite the risks and fear because I realized joy is ours to grasp, not to be handed.  And that I wasn’t alone at the bottom of the pit.  Maybe I could shine a little light down into it, if not pull someone out of it.

Realizing and doing are two different things, however.  I have a business plan to write.  I have a child who is too smart for her own (and my) good that I have yet to enroll in preschool.  I have my own anxiety to swallow.  And the usual chaos that raising three children entails (Seriously, did I not see this coming?).

Right now I like being in my sweats.  But I wonder if being in them too long will make me break out in a cold sweat.  Too long out of the loop.  Too long in the confines of my own house with little people.  Longer than the short fuse of my resolve from lessons hard learned.

It’s easy to be a wimp.  It’s so damn hard to push forward into uncharted waters.  I’m trying at least to keep up with the current; tread water or cling to my little rock in the midst of it all.  The flow certainly isn’t stagnant, though.  I’m just trying to get enough huff and puff to get back in there.