Change is scary

Do you know what it's like to get comfortable?  When you've been doing something for so long it seems as natural as taking a breath.  Change is scary.  What we do with that fear dictates who we are and what we become.  I've been a college student for almost 5 years.  I started out, several years ago, when I was a single mother of 3 boys, working full time, knowing that divorce was around the corner.  I'd been left in a sad home with three children who needed to be taken care of, the bank was reposessing the house that had been our home and sadness oozed from every corner.

I realized that I had to change.  I had to make myself do something I never thought I would do.  I started by taking one night class.  Just to see.  Just to try.  Now, 5 years later I am finally in a happy home and I am one semester away from graduating with my bachelors. 

Now it is time for me to change again.  I want so badly to get my masters.  Change is scary.  It is daunting and overwhelming.  I've begun the process though.  Paperwork has been printed, portfolio has been started, and I'm studying for the GRE.  It's all about having courage.


Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
Mark Twain


I have an appointment at 4 today to meet with one of the professors of the psychology department at WKU.  I will likely have to drive an hour and twenty minutes every day to class then home again.  It's another two years of homework, studying, writing papers.  I need the courage to keep going. 

And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight inside the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

Anais Nin

It's time for me to put on my big girl pants and just do it.  Why am I scared?  Change is scary.  I have to admit, I am scared to death of the GRE.  Why?  Math.  Math and I go way back.  It, at best, is a tumultuous relationship.  I know I can do it.  But the fear is there.  The anxiety.  I am doing this for me.  For my family.  For my husband.  For my children.  I want better.  I can do it.

But still.

I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there' and it will move.
The Bible
Matthew 17:20 

I will do it, with palms sweaty, knots in my stomach, shaking hands, and bile in my throat.  I will.

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.
Ambrose Redmoon
Failure is not my greatest fear.  My greatest fear is that others will see me for the imposter I feel I am.  I don't give myself enough credit for my successes.  I trivialize them and mock them as being something anyone could achieve. 

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light not our darkness that frightens us. We ask ourselves 'who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?'
Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.

It's not just in some of us; its in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.

As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."Marianne Williamson