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Breathe in Change



Recently, my husband just started a new job. It has truly been a blessing but did not come without its challenges. He has been a stay-at-home dad for all of my daughter's 22 months of life. While I can not be there myself all day to feed her lunch or make sure she has her nap, knowing he was there with her was the next best thing.

She has had an incredible amount of stability throughout her life and loves being on a schedule. Of course, it is HER schedule, no one else's. Doctors and parenting books tell you to put your child on a schedule for eating and sleeping and pooping (seriously?!?) but she is incredibly stubborn and insisted on setting it herself. Therefore, it changes slightly with each phase of growth, but it works. 

Now she is being uprooted and doesn't like it - not one bit. Her eating is erratic, her naps are almost non-existent, and she wakes up at least once a night for mommy's cuddles. It's like she needs assurance that we are still there whenever she needs us. A part of me is broken-hearted. The other part of me is just plain exhausted.

Change is hard. Even if you like change, even if you pray for it, transition from one phase to another is sometimes like pushing an elephant through a key hole. (Can you picture that? Not pretty.) 

But change is a part of living. If we stayed the same, exactly the same, without movement, without interaction, without growth, we would literally shrivel up and die. Encountering challenges and enduring pain is the only way we know we are still breathing. We inhale the situations and exhale the outcomes. It is the brief moments that we internalize the issues, where we hold it in our lungs that determine the course. This is the time we react, the seconds we decide. The words, the actions. This is the season of growth or decay. This is what determines what will emerge when we exhale. 

Then things begin to change. We change - our minds, our thoughts, our feelings. Maybe we just think its all external, that things are just happening around us or to us. 

No. We are part of that change - or we should be. That is how we grow past being that infant clinging on to her mother in the middle of the night. We change.

One day (hopefully one day soon), my daughter will get acclimated to her new routine. She will make it her own. It may take many tears or frustration, it may take sleepless nights or meals uneaten, but it will happen. And with every passing day, month year, she matures and understands more and more. And perhaps, at some point, will appreciate the hours mommy and daddy spent at work, or the hours she had with her grandmother instead. 

Inhale, exhale.

What change is occurring in your life right now? Is it happening to you, or are you sucking it into your lungs? Let that breathe feed your body, like oxygen. Change can be hard. Change can be beautiful. 

Now let it go. 

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