Blogger and poet Marilyn Nielson captured such a situation here. I love how she talks through the mix of emotions as she was hiking with her family and her sore foot. She also was pregnant with her eighth child.
“Whether I'm hurt or pregnant, it's better for me to be treated normally and not like some delicate, breakable porcelain doll. Really, I do prefer it, and I take it as a compliment if someone assumes I can handle hard things! I WANT to think that I can! If someone mentions my "delicate condition" I will laugh! ... But I don't know if you've felt like this. Sometimes just the fact of other people expecting you to be tough and up-for-anything can feel daunting. Like because it's expected of you, you can't admit it when you're struggling. I know that's prideful. Obviously everyone struggles. There are some things I would ask for help with in an instant! But here in Oregon, I wanted so much not to be physically weak! And at the same time I perversely just wanted someone to fuss over me and take care of me. And here I was hiking along with Goldie, feeling like the weakest person ever—torn between wanting to just sit down and cry, and being determined to keep going until I died right there on the trail, just to show everyone!”
She grumbled at her family and told them she was going back to the car.
It seemed even farther and steeper going back, and all the tree roots and the steep angles of the trail left my foot (and my belly!) aching and throbbing. I kept thinking that I just couldn't keep going. But there didn't seem any alternative either. I was crying and sniffling. And then…I heard someone else crying and sniffling! This is actually so funny when I imagine watching it from the outside. These two poor little forlorn souls, in this most beautiful and UNhorrible of situations! I came around a bend in the trail and there was my little Daisy. She was … crying, and for a second I felt annoyed with her along with everyone else in the world, but when she looked up at me with her tear-filled eyes and said, "My foot hurts! I have a blister!" my heart melted and I felt so much compassion for her. She was ME! Poor little me in a tiny form. And at that same moment that I felt a wave of love for her, I felt unaccountably reassured that Heavenly Father loved me, too.
But in those split seconds, even though I wanted to—I also instinctively knew that I shouldn't just sit down with her and cry, or we'd NEVER make it back! I knew there was still a long way to go. So I took a deep breath and wiped my eyes and said as cheerfully as I could, "Daisy, I'm so glad I found you. My feet hurt too! And I'm so tired! And I've been crying just like you! But there's no other way back except for us just to keep going. And you know what helps most when you're feeling like it's too hard? Being grateful and being brave. And now we can do that together!"
And suddenly, amazingly, I felt like we could! We started talking about when Teddy was born and it was so hard, and how I felt the strength of all these presences near, helping me. And we talked about how when you think about good things, the bad things feel so much smaller. We love wildflowers, so we hunted for those and tried to notice how many different ones we could find. We talked about how beautiful it was out on the beach; how huge and unbroken the ocean looked out beyond the edges of the bay.
As I read this I was reminded of Heavenly Father’s words to Joe and me in blessings we received last week. I was also reminded of a prompting I received when I was studying the scriptures the other day. I realized that we've been gently and lovingly told in multiple ways how to make this challenging part of the journey a bit better.
Nelson says “But there's no other way back except for us just to keep going. And you know what helps most when you're feeling like it's too hard? Being grateful and being brave. And now we can do that together!"
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Read full post here
Here's another post I did on Nelson
I enjoy her insights. I would be interested in knowing when she writes and how she makes time to do the pondering she has to do to come up with the insights. As a mother of seven, soon to be eight, who home schools her children, I do wonder how she does it.
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