I’ve never struggled to know what I wanted in life. I stopped letting my mom dress me when I was 3 (bless her and my three-year-old stylish self). I didn’t pause at what my older siblings chose and confidently braved my own choices that I knew to be my heart’s desire. I think I knew who I wanted to marry when I was 15 years old (and I did). I knew I didn’t want to start a family for about 4 years after we got married (and we didn’t). I always thought I would stay home with our kids when we had them (and I have). Not all of my choices have been easy ones or great ones (hence my three-year-old fashion sense), but there’s been a peace in the making of them that I feel life has since robbed me of.
As adulthood collided with motherhood in my life, my peace has seemed to disappear. To be fair, both do take a lot more consideration and research in the decisions they demand than what will go with a toddler’s favorite pink cowboy boots. Not only are there more decisions, more options, more lasting effects, but it’s no longer my lasting effects. Everything I decide will produce effects for someone else to live with. That’s heavy. It’s produced years of an indecision that I’ve never grappled with before.
Recently during a late-night chat with my friend Christina, she encouraged me by saying I’m good at balance. She told me I was good at seeing two sides of an issue. At being able to see it from both perspectives and weigh the costs. I did feel encouraged at viewing that as a good thing. Until I looked at the other side of it. I think sometimes looking at both sides and seeing both as legitimate leaves me feeling stuck in my own life. Which way is best? Which way is right? It has had the tendency to bring me into decision fatigue. And for the first time, I feel like we’re all in that same place together.
These days every moment is a decision. And each decision we are forced to make is simply impossible. Impossible! Going to doctor’s offices and making medical decisions from information you piece together through masks and protective guards. Going to school and actively choosing to expose my children and family? Staying home and actively choosing that my child will not get the social interaction or education that he/she needs emotionally and mentally? Impossible. On that same note, if I keep them home to maintain a level of control, that same level has to hold across the board to be effective. In church, playdates, out to eat, birthdays.
The chafing truth is that this virus makes us all hypocrites. Not because we are being fake or hiding our true nature but because we simply cannot remain true to our decisions and hold them constant when the only constant thing in our worlds right now is change. One situation feels comfortable while another brings unrest. Every day brings new information, and therefore it demands we take a new stance on what we will do with them. Moreover, our ever-fluctuating levels anxiety of do not always allow us to be operate on facts or hearsays.
It’s started to remind me of being pregnant. When you’re pregnant, there are endless rules and advice on what to do and what to eat. For every on of those rules, you can find a dispute. One doctor emphatically says no cold lunch meat. Another says it’s okay because they believe the risk is low. One says only X amount of caffeine, another says whatever is your usual. One says no sushi, one says only cooked, and yet another says whatever you would normally choose be it cooked or otherwise. And less publicly than sending kids to school but bearing the same weight on our consciences, we must leave and make our own decision. It is based on what we personally have been told, life experience, trust in our informers, and what allows us to lay our heads down at night. That’s a lot of factors that have to either line up or outweigh each other.
I remember being pregnant with my first baby and therefore navigating it all for the first time. After an early miscarriage and months upon months of trying. My situation felt very much like I wanted to do whatever I could in order not only to produce a healthy baby, but also to avoid the regret and heavy burden of if I did not. I remember going to my favorite lunch spot in Baton Rouge and requesting if they could warm my sandwich twice—just for good measure. And even though they happily obliged, I still had a heaviness of guilt and what-if that I carried the rest of the day. It very much felt not worth it to me. I knew the facts and I trusted my doctor implicitly who told me once it was warmed, it was okay. I just couldn’t reconcile what I knew with that I felt. And that was okay. For me in that pregnancy, I could not in good conscience eat lunch meat. It was for this same reason I also abstained from caffeine completely. For my own personal peace, I needed to operate on these careful terms.
Fast forward to my third pregnancy where I had more than warmed to the assurance of these guidelines. I warmed lunch meat and ate it without pause. I consumed at least my allotted amount of caffeine plus maybe a teensy bit more to fuel me for wrangling the other two kiddos. And although drastically different choices than my first baby, my peace was the same. Did that make me a hypocrite? Did it make that first-time mom silly or too careful and that third time veteran not as cautious or caring? Not at all. Both just made me a functioning human being. A person who allowed herself to change her mind and do the right thing for herself in both seasons. Between the two, I had experienced two healthy pregnancies producing two healthy babies between and therefore operated with the conviction and new confidence those produced. Those two different mamas separated by two different experiences were indeed contrasting, but neither wrong.
We’re in a time where we want permission. We want guarantees and we want peace. We long to make these decisions before us and be able to still lay our heads down at night. To fall asleep at night ultimately feeling okay about which way we chose. In our current situation, this hope proves to be elusive. Hope has never been found in circumstances and COVID has certainly served to heighten this. Not only does true control of our own exposure remain impossible, but also the exposure of those we love as well.
My great Uncle Alvin was a character. There was always a story with him, but one of them humorously but accurately illustrates our deep fear of fate. One day he was asked to join a group on a private airplane ride to which he adamantly refused. Sensing his distrust and fear, my dad laughingly responded intending to put him at ease. “Uncle Alvin, when it’s your time, it’s your time—you can’t change it.” To which Uncle Alvin persistently countered, “but what if we get up there and it’s your time?”
That laughingly, and perhaps a little more morbidly, depicts our fears right now. What if I do everything right, maintain careful control, and someone else exposes me? What if my decision affects someone else and proves to be my fault? And while we do have social responsibility to follow CDC guidelines and doctors we trust, we cannot camp in those worries forever. We can’t hold our beliefs that we can control fate by what we choose. It wasn’t true in Uncle Alvin’s case and it isn’t true for ours today. God is sovereign. He has always been sovereign and he always will be sovereign. A plane ride won’t change that and neither will COVID. Along with everything preceding us in history, it hasn’t surprised him and neither will it trump him. We can help and operate with wisdom and humility as we social distance when we can, wear a mask, and sanitize. Let’s make our best efforts without a doubt. But we can ultimately stop worrying that for the first time in history, the outcome of our best efforts lies ultimately in our hands. As I’ve heard it lovingly put, “you Darling, you are not that powerful.”
Take your best shots. Make decisions with wisdom and the best information you have, but don’t allow your future self to resent that previously less informed self. Resentment is assuming that someone else understood and felt the same personal conviction you have. Hypocrite means I believe or feel one way and act another. Changing my mind just means I'm learning. Keep making progress with your personal convictions and to your personal pace. But allow others around you to do the same despite the differences in choices. Whether you go out or stay home, leave the shame, guilt, and constant questioning of yourself and others at the door.
In our place in history, questions and decisions hang demandingly over our heads and no one can truly tell us or give the permission we so badly crave. All we can do is endeavor to simply do our best, allow room for error, hold freedom to change our minds, and pepper every little step with grace. Choosing one thing this week and another next week does not make us hypocrites-- it just makes us human. These decisions are impossible—not one is perfect. But the Holy Spirit has never once led us astray and won’t fail us now. May we continue to do what we’ve always needed to: simply acknowledge him in all our ways, even in COVID, back to school options, and future activities. This time of change has not changed God’s plans. And just as he’s planned since the beginning of time, he will not forsake us but make our paths straight.
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