"I can swim"

One of my favorite phrases lately.  Someone actually told me it a few weeks ago, and it's stuck with me.  I repeat it almost daily - several times on "those" days.  You know what ones I'm talking about.

And then the other day, I was reading one of the "inspiring blogs" I mentioned earlier.  And guess what one of her posts was titled?  "You can swim!"  Of course I was intrigued and started reading.  She told a story of how she was at a zoo taking a ride through the "monkey islands".  She said that there were no fences that kept the monkeys on those islands, but they just stood there, on the banks, staring at the boats.  So out of curiousity she asked the guide why the monkeys didn't just leave their island?  The guide told her that they could - very easily - but each one didn't know that they could swim.  So, there they stay.  On this little island.  Stuck.  Just because they didn't know that they could actually swim!

How crazy is that?  Not so crazy if you ask me.  I think so many of us get "stuck" - we think that there's no where else to go.  We find it hard to move past or climb those mountains that are in front of us....or swim that pond, lake or ocean that's right in front of us.  Now, I'm not the best swimmer (literally), but I can swim.  I. CAN. SWIM.  It may be a doggy paddle day, but I can swim.  I won't be stuck on that little lonely island.

I don't mean for our little family journal to become a bunch of posts of how I survive every day.  But this is something I want my little kidlets to know.  Because life is hard, but we can make it beautiful.  And we can survive.  We're going to have hard days....sometimes months.  But you can do it.  You can swim.