okay. good.
Both girls got the tummy bug this week. A few days in, it got me, too.
Puke buckets, cold wash cloths on the forehead, icy water sipped through tiny mouths that could barely lift off the pillow.
Mountains of laundry, midnight baths. Sleeping on towels, the chills, the sweats, the delirium.
Round the clock Mothering.
There is always light at the end of the tunnel.
All the plans, canceled. Just like that.
The Christmas party we were finally hosting. Not happening.
My yoga teaching commitments that get sharpied in my calendar as in these are non negotiables, turns out, negotiable.
Because it has to be. We are humans living in a physical world where sh*t happens.
Doesn’t mean we like it. Or manage it well. Or don’t throw a toddler style tantrum about it. I checked all those boxes.
I cringed when I had to send out the text that I needed a sub for my classes. The awkward message sent via paperless post canceling our party. I felt weak. Pathetic. Like if I really wanted to I could find a way to be okay and do all the things that my planner said I was going to do. Even typing it here makes my stomach churn.
No amount of glass half full enthusiasm was going to work. I had to endure. To wait. To surrender. To remember that I am a human living on the material plane. Hard stop.
Just like in yoga, the most difficult poses are the ones that essentially ask us to do what we perceive to be nothing.
Savasana, translation = corpse pose, ends every practice. Lay there like you are dead. Do nothing. Close your eyes, breathe, let your body melt into the mat. Some people get up and leave the room this pose is so maddening to them. Western productivity brainwashing has us so wound up we cannot fathom wasting time like that.
Those poses that ask us to surrender, receive, pause - they are the hardest and most life changing.
Instead of “being sick” I told myself that I was in a version of Savasana. Deep rest.
Lean in to the stopping, Sara. Stay. Don’t leave the room. It showed up for a reason. Listen and learn from it.
This was my mantra.
It’s the stopping that gives the Higher Power the window to enter. To give us the download of the divine.
We can’t get it if we don’t stop long enough to receive it and get quiet enough to hear it.
We have to flow. To be willing and open to change. If not, we suffer.
We have to learn to embrace the pivot and trust the universe ultimately has our back. That everything that is happening is meant to be exactly this way. Even the yucky stuff. It has a reason. It comes because there is some unseen work to be done and this (illness, losing your job, divorce) is the vehicle of choice.
Especially those things we think we just cannot swallow. It’s those things that have taught me the most.
We are looking through a peep hole. Life sees the entire picture. All of it, start to finish. It knows. We do not.
What we do have is how we choose to respond to Life.
Okay, this happened. How I respond to it is my choice and determines the quality of my life.
When my fever soared, chills shook my body and I was a ball of immobility under the covers, I finally surrendered. It took that to get me to open my hand and release rather than gripping at it (control) all so tightly.
In my silent prayers, I’d asked for a break. Rest. A tiny pause. Please God, just a little one.
I got it. It didn’t look the way I wanted it to look. Does it ever? But I saw that in fact my request had been answered.
Our thoughts become things.
Adjusting our course in life doesn’t mean failure. It means Evolution. Growth. Expansion.
This week, all the things that light me up in life - my health, teaching yoga, celebrating Christmas with close friends - were wiped away.
And the things I didn’t want to happen, happened. I didn’t fall apart. I came out the other side with clarity, gratitude, compassion. I did the next right thing, and then the next. I didn’t cross my arms and puff my bottom lip out. I stayed in the discomfort and let it do its work on me. There is so much power in the staying.
I read somewhere about a person who responded “okay, good” anytime anyone brought information to him.
No matter what it was.
Stock market is up. Okay, good.
Stock market is down. Okay, good.
The house is on fire. Okay, good.
It immediately launches things to the positive. It seems childish and small, but our response is the only thing we control. It’s the Holy Grail of all habits. The compass that will direct your life. How you respond is Who You Are.
And then the light.
Ever so slowly it peaks back in. A piece of toast. A popsicle. A 4-hour stretch of sleep. A night free of bed changes, and spooning a fevered child.
And then they want pasta for dinner. And they are jumping on the trampoline. And they are back at school.
The clouds part, the sun shines, the adrenaline that has been sustaining me burns off and the light pours in.
It happens, it always does. It is the cycle of life. We can receive or resist. Less effort, more ease. Let yourself be transformed through all of it.
I’ve copied this Okay, good lens for my life. It’s an immediate wash of calm and relief. I’ve got this. You've got this.
Together, we’ve got this.
Always, I’m here for you.