I plan, God laughs, Yoga helps

One of the things that scared me about having a baby was the enormity of the endeavor, on a philosophical level.  I was creating not only a life, but a lifetime.  How would I care for this person for a lifetime?  What kinds of things should I try to convey are the important things in life?  What is life all about?  What will I do if something happens to this baby?  How will I go on?

The list goes on and on.  These kinds of questions bob around my brain on a daily basis.  Being pregnant made it worse. Now it's not just my life for which I need to figure out answers to these age-old questions, but I also have to be responsible for someone elses' as well. For a really long time.  Being a mother is not time-limited.

As the litany of "why are we here questions" begins to ebb, the unending list of possible answers begin to lap up to my consciousness, like waves to the shore.

This stuff gets me feeling anxious.  It's a cycle.  The more agitated I get, the more possible answers come to me, the more I feel like a need to figure it out.  I begin to feel immobilized.  How can I go on without figuring this stuff out?  How will I ever figure it out?

Although this is one that I still need a lot of help with, yoga provides me with a avenue to begin to cope.  Yoga teaches me that not only do I not need to have any of this stuff figured out, I am not responsible, on the highest levels, for the outcome.  It's like that old adage: We plan, God laughs. Not that I can't make daily plans, or that I shouldn't have goals, but life is fluid and stuff happens all the time that is totally outside of my control. 

Another meaning I find in yoga is that everything makes sense on some level.  It's just that, sometimes, it doesn't yet make sense on MY level.  The challenge is to understand that and feel comfortable with it.

Yoga encourages me to be present in the moment, in the here and now.  It's a struggle for me.  My brain will always run back to the questions and a desire for answers.  What I know now, though, is that yoga is a place I can go to quell the anxiety, stop asking the questions, give up the responsibility of knowing all the answers, and as best I can, BE with and enjoy my son.