when the student is ready: you can do hard things

hard thing: 60 miles in 3 days - Komen 3-day for a cure - walk to fight breast cancer

i can't believe it's friday already and i haven't posted yet! where does the time go? without further ado:

buddha says that when the student is ready, the teacher will appear.

for years i believed this to mean that my guru would whisk me away to enlightened-dom in the peaceful, chanting bliss of an ashram in india or indonesia, or somewhere equally as ancient and meditate-y. i just knew i was headed for enlightened greatness when my yoga teacher asked me to join a teacher training program with her esteemed teacher. my teacher had appeared, my life would take a drastic turn and viola! i'd be - well something different than what i was before. 

ahh - young grasshopper - the key to this teaching is that the student must be 'ready,' meaning the student must be ready to recognize and accept teachings in all forms from teachers of all shapes and sizes. what i'd failed to recognize is that i'd had many, many teachers. i just had never paid heed to their lessons, lost as i was in searching for something more.

today, i launch the inaugural post in the 'when the student is ready' series. this series will explore my teachers in all their forms. hopefully this series will also help raise your awareness of the teachers in your life.

i have a whole slew of teachers that i cannot wait to esteem in the 'pages' of this blog. first and foremost is my 5-year-old son. he is so like me in so many ways and i cannot count the times that a piece of advice or instruction has come out of my mouth and i wonder if i'm saying it to him or to me.

this week has been an emotional one for me regarding this blog and other things i want for my life and for my kids. i want to be here for them more and spend more time with them. god knows, i'm not at all interested in home schooling, but i'd like to have them home with me a little more - even being able to pick them up at traditional school let out time - 3PM instead of rushing them out the door every morning and rushing them thru dinner/bath/bed in the evenings when they get home and i get off work.

if you've known me very long, you know that i've always dreamed of striking out on my own and doing something. but i've always frozen myself with fear whenever i think too seriously about it. this week has been one of those weeks of thinking/planning/dreaming/freezing.

last night, while i was fixing dinner, said 5-yr-old was putting together a puzzle he got for his birthday. it is a puzzle with 48 pcs, and it's a hologram - seriously! he kept asking for help and i kept telling him that i'd help him after dinner, but that he should keep trying because he was doing a great job (it's a super hard puzzle). "it's too hard!" he whined. i stopped, knelt down beside him and said "but you can do hard things." not sure how much it helped him, but as i got up, that voice inside my head that i don't listen to often enough repeated my words back to me.

now i will repeat them to you:

you can do hard things
you can do hard things
you can do hard things
i can do hard things
i can do hard things
i can do hard things
we can do hard things
we can do hard things
we can do hard things

please comment, email me or shoot me a message on facebook. tell me one hard thing you've done. i'd like to compile a celebration list.