Last night, out of the blue, my husband told me how disappointed he was in me.  Let me step back for a moment and admit that it is possible that wasn’t what he was saying, but rather that was what I was hearing.  I recognize that at times there is a disconnect between what our love ones say and what we as humans actually hear.  Fine.

But last night, real or imagined, my husband went on to point out the very expensive Master’s Degree, along with the very expensive brain I have is being wasted in my current job.  He elaborated, reminding me of a time when I was passionately motivated to change the world, to help the children, to protect those that can’t protect themselves.  And it is true, there was a time in my life that I would have given all that I have to work at an organization such as “Make a Wish”, or I would have dropped everything to work at a non-profit that helped battered women.  I was absolutely passionate, but what my husband doesn’t know is that I still am.

However, I am in a different place in my life.  I am the first to admit that my job is a joke.  For the most part, I sit around waiting for someone to need something from me.  My “crisis” are made up by the bored and rich, and no one is better for me being here.  I recognize this, hell, I live this.

But there is something else.  I am tired.  I am sometimes so tired that I don’t know how to breathe.  I am a mother, a daughter, a sister, a wife.   I am a patient, an accountant, a teacher, a salesman.  I am so many things, and have been so many things my whole entire life.  It is selfish to say, but if you polled my family, who would stand up to say that their first objective is not promoting theirselves or their children, but something greater?

What if, instead, I am in a period of rest?  Could anyone accept that there are times in our lives when we need to stop and simply make what we can out of what we do have?  I am not the great thing I always thought that I would be, instead I feel like this portion of my life is about recuperating.

I am not working fifteen hour days, like I once have.  I am not struggling to find day care for my sick child, I am not submerged in guilt for not being everything that everyone thought I could be.  I am not working towards greatness, but it doesn’t mean that I have lost the ability to be great.

Sometimes in life we all need a break.  Sometimes that break lasts a day, a week, a month.  Mine is going to last longer.  I need to find my own personal reason, my own personal truth.  Not based on the work that I am doing, nor the children I have; but rather, based on my own heart and my own soul.  Could there be a day when I go back to being that person, helping and changing the world?  Will I one day need that fulfillment of making a life easier?  I don’t know.  I haven’t gotten there.

What I do know is that sometimes just waking up is enough.  Sometimes just paying the bills is enough.  Sometimes the mundane is as important as the extraordinary.  I have a disease, an awesome disease that is going to guarantee that I will again have the energy, the drive and the dedication to be all everyone else wants me to be.  But for now, the truth is I am learning what is enough.  And that is enough.