You know the story about the man who carried a heavy cross? It goes something like this:
There once was a man who carried a heavy cross. He carried this cross for days, weeks, months, years, until one day he just couldn’t do it anymore. He approached God and asked if he could choose a different cross. Being a merciful God, he led this man into a room filled with crosses and told him to choose whichever one he wanted. The man looked around him in despair because all he could see were huge, heavy crosses, much larger and heavier than the one he had been carrying. Finally, he spied a small wooden cross propped against the far wall—the smallest of them all. He brightened and immediately turned to God saying “That’s the one. That’s the cross I wish to bear.” And God replied, “My son, that’s the cross you just gave to me.”
My husband reminded me of this recently and I can’t stop thinking about it. We were discussing how bleak this world has become and questioning our place within that world—as adults and especially as parents raising future adults. I’ve been struggling a lot with this country’s attempts to return to normalcy. Pretty much everyone I know has stopped quarantine and begun reuniting with their family and friends. But not my family. We’ve taken maybe one or two teeny, tiny steps but other than that I just can’t bring myself to branch out yet, and that weighs on my mind like a ton of bricks.
No matter which way I look, we lose. When I choose safety, I allow my fears and anxieties to win, and we remain locked inside this bubble where I torture myself over being a horrible parent to two young children who ask longingly when we’re going to be able to see family and friends again. But then if I choose freedom and release my babies back out into the world, I run the risk—the very real risk—of them getting sick. And I am terrified of sickness; I’ve written about it ad nauseam. Just the other day I admitted to my husband that even I can’t believe how insanely traumatized I am by our family’s experiences with illness over the past six years. So, how can I expect anyone else to understand? I can’t. I remind myself that it’s not as if my concerns aren’t warranted—we are still living in a pandemic after all and we’ve only recently begun to venture out into society again—but that doesn’t make me feel any better.
No one’s compelling us to socialize, per se, but nowadays there’s always an unspoken, underlying societal pressure to do what everyone else is doing. And if you don’t then you’re lesser somehow—and definitely a lesser parent. At least that’s how it feels to me. I hate that feeling. The feeling that you don’t measure up. The feeling that you’re weaker than everyone else. Or more paranoid or scared or inflexible. Maybe I am all those things but, then again, why the heck do I care what anyone else thinks? This is my family and we need to do what’s best for us, not everyone else. But damn, judgment within the parenting realm is harsh, severe, and unrelenting. It’s enough to rattle even the most decisive parent.
That makes it hard to stick to your guns in these types of situations, especially when you feel like you’re the only ones on the planet missing out on all the fun. It’s much easier to throw caution to the wind, jump on the majority bandwagon, and go along for the ride. And deep down that’s what I really, really wanna do!!! I want my family to go along for the ride! I want my children to be able to play with their cousins and friends, envelop their grandparents in a big bear hug, go to an amusement park, dine out for pizza and ice cream, and just live life again! I want it so bad it hurts.
It would be so easy to forget, too. Sometimes when I look around or talk to family and friends, things seem so normal and for a moment the months of quarantine and fear that we all just lived through seem like someone else’s life. But then reality washes over me and I remember that all it takes is one time—one minor misstep of exposing my kids and putting them in a situation where they could catch a deadly, still-unknown virus. Unfortunately, we’ve been here before, not within a pandemic, of course, because none of us have been through something like this. But we have been faced with the decision to expose our children over and over again and the few times we let our guards down, ignored our intuition, and took a chance … well, let’s just say it hardcore backfired in our faces. As I said, I’m traumatized. Now, when my momma’s gut talks, I listen. And right now, she’s telling me to hunker down, to wait, and to watch. So, that’s what we’re doing.
I suppose it seems like I’ve gone off on a wild tangent here but in a sense, this is my heavy burden, my cross. These deep-seated fears eat away at my mind, heart, and soul. Some days I bear them like a boss but other times I stagger under their grueling gravity. Those are the days I must reflect on the story above because it reminds me that no matter how challenging or scary or intimidating life seems, we always have the option to lay down our cross, if only for a moment, reassess our situation, and understand and appreciate that our burden isn’t nearly as cumbersome as we believe. Just knowing that makes me feel lighter somehow.
And that lightness gives me the clarity to see that we don’t need to make any decisions right now. Just because the world has reopened doesn’t mean my family has to rush out and rejoin the masses. We can stay safely tucked away in our cocoon until we’re ready. Because in this unprecedented time, there are no right or wrong answers. No right or wrong decisions. All we can do is what’s best for our own families, and that’s a cross I will gladly bear, with ease.