cross to bear

A while back another mother of one of NJ's preschool classmates told Golden that she did not know if she could handle a situation we were dealing with regarding NJ at the time as a compliment to her patience.  Within a couple of months we received word that that mother had to deal with her son having a medical situation far, far worse than we have dealt with for either of our kids yet.

Unless he or she had a traumatic childhood, I do not think the typical person realizes the severity of the challenges that most people have to face in life until they are no longer considered a young adult.  Everyone has something, and that something is usually huge.  I feel like almost every family I know has some issue that I do not know how I would deal with.  Whether it is serious illnesses/death, miscarriages, affairs, divorces, major financial hardships, perpetual unemployment, mental/emotional instability, or simply rebellious children, almost no one is immune.  It also seems like all of this bad stuff is from recent years.

I know that a lot of bad stuff happened to people I knew when I was a kid, but a lot of that stuff is usually shielded from kids.  As an example, it may sound uncaring but when you hear about an adult in the hospital as a youth it does not sound unexpected.  You don't get the morbid details of the complications that person goes through, and it rarely directly impacts you.  Older people end up in hospitals, and you don't have an appreciation for someone in their thirties or forties being relatively young.  It's simply another name brought up for a prayer request.  That changes as an adult when forty isn't old any more and I am more closely acquainted with those who are sick.

To be fair, there are difficulties that Golden and I face.  In a vacuum they often seem serious, but when I compare to others, we do not have it that bad.  A lot of what we do face has to do with being parents of two energetic kids, so those difficulties even frequently have benefits that far outweigh them.

Given how poorly I have handled the curve balls that life has thrown me, I have some doubts about how I would handle a more serious hardship.  My crosses seem horrible until I see some of what others have to tolerate.  God, give them strength.