Breathe in. Breathe out. Move on.

I saw that on a bumper sticker.

Normally quippy phrases on cars don’t do much for me (you know, other than maybe make me smirk) but for some reason this one made me pause. So I followed its directions. While waiting for a red light I took a deep breath in, let it out slowly and tried to focus on figuring out how to move on.

The past couple of years have been brutal. It seems like every time I get a little too relaxed or too confidant about life being under control, something else catches me off guard and lobs a big curveball at me. And if there is one sport I’ve never been able to fake enough to play socially, it’s baseball.

Independently none of these things have been devastating events, or really even events that have been totally unique situations for myself and my family. Oh, there’s been difficult stuff – but I can’t say that my pain has been worse than anyone else’s pain. Besides, I think pain is relative anyway because we all have a different threshold of how much we can take and everyone can handles theirs differently. So I realize that the thing that finally made me feel like I crumbled this year might not have even made the radar for someone else. I also hate comparison traps. So you do you, and I’ll do me. Cool?

Anyway, I’ve been working through that thing that finally made me feel like crumbling. The thing that after everything else that’s happened finally got to me. Or at least I’m telling myself I’m working through it. It caught me off guard, sucked the breath out of me and so now I’m working on getting myself back together. Though the kicker is the hardest part has been trying to decide which of the crumbly pieces are actually things I want to pick back up and put together. And which I just want to let go. I guess that’s bright side of this whole thing: that I get to decide what’s most important.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Move on.

Stop being angry. Leave that piece on the group. Walk away from it (and TRY really hard NOT to look back).

Grab more crumbly pieces of patience off ground. Kiss my babies. Love my babies even more than I already do.

Do something I enjoy. Let those (formally) crumbly pieces grow bigger. Keep doing that thing.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Move on.