Other People's Reality

Sometimes talking to other people slaps you upside the head with what your own reality is.

I was talking with the pastor's wife earlier this week. Having noticed that Maggie wasn't at Didache on Monday night, she wondered what was up with regard to surgery, and if Maggie might be in the hospital now. I told her that surgery was still almost two weeks away and that Maggie had stayed home because she was tired and wanted to go to bed early. I told her that I wasn't going to encourage Maggie to come out late for class on Monday because the "punies" seemed to be making headway in our house. The germs haven't won an all-out battle, but the germies were sapping the vitality of a few family members last weekend.

My friend suggested that, with two weeks to surgery, that wasn't so bad because that'd give people time to get sick, pass it around, and still get over it in plenty of time to be healthy for surgery. And that would make sense: in most other families, she'd be exactly right. But it is so far from my reality. For a kid with a depressed immune system, two weeks into an illness is just getting started on the down-time.

Somehow, that gave me a jolt as to how what I now consider "regular life" isn't actually so regular. Kinda bummed me out.



But what is important for me to remember is that everybody has things like this -- things that other people are unaware of, or that other people don't understand. Some people have struggles because of money problems that aren't obvious to others. Some people have sons or husbands fighting in the mid-East. Some people have conflict with their children or spouse, or maybe really rough waters with the extended family. Some people have personality conflicts with the folks at work. Some have health issues. Some are mourning and taking "too long" to get over it (as if the length of mourning has a prescribed cut-off time). How often is the mom-with-a-job jealous of the stay-at-home mom for the time she has with her kids? And how often is the stay-at-home mom jealous of the income of the employed mom (and the adult conversation available to her)? How often is the person with a physical disability jealous of someone who appears healthy, not knowing of the person's debilitating allergies or mental illness?

My friend Cheryl commented on the homeschool email list the other day about how she just can't keep up with everything like other people seem to. But the others don't!! Everybody is failing. We're just failing at different things.

It's like reading those demoralizing homeschool magazines. Gertrude's kids are violin whizzes. And Marybell's kids are starting college at age 15. And Ernestine's kids have home-grown businesses. And BettyMae's kids do all the housecleaning and cooking while Mom teaches Latin to the 3-yr-old. And my kids just want to play legos and video games, often "forget" their chores, fuss with their siblings, don't take music lessons or play soccer. My kids don't do all the things "their kids" do. Thing is, none of those kids do all the things the "other kids" do.

Sometimes we're so accustomed to our own struggles (like with an immune-depressed child) that we don't even recognize the facts of how it slows us down, and we wonder what's wrong with us that we can't keep up with everything that everybody else is doing. Other times, we see the ease that other people enjoy, while we're very much aware of the struggles we face each day, and our little hearts cry out, "But it's not fair!" And yet, those other people have "realities" that I'm not privy to. So I don't even have sense enough to rejoice in all the ease that I have. Or on the flip side, I don't even have the sense to rejoice in the fact that sometimes I can take "struggles" for granted and simply go on, plowing through life with them as if it's just "regular life"; no biggie. :-)

You know what? I think this has turned into a Thanksgiving post.