Can you pin-point a place in time, in your personal history, where the course of your life changed? A choice that was made – by you, or perhaps one that was made for you – that would forever alter your life. Allow yourself to travel back in time to that place, that moment in time. Can you see your younger self? Take a second, close your eyes, and take it all in. What are you wearing? What do you smell? Who is around you? What do you hear? Linger for a bit, if you can. Now, look your younger self in the eye, and tell her something that will make what you know is coming easier to endure.
I had had an emotional morning, and I knew that the melancholy feeling that hovered over me was a result of my intention to write a letter to my five-year-old self. It was a task that was suggested by my therapist, who also recommended that I gift myself thirty minutes of time every week. I got ready for my day as I did every Sunday, but anything that could go wrong seemed to. The small things that I could usually brush off had me in tears. When I got to church for music practice I immediately wanted to turn around and get back in my car…so I did. After sitting my things at my seat, I grabbed my keys and returned to my car. I didn’t want to leave, but I also didn’t want to go back inside. I really wanted to run, to be alone, to cry without judgement or sympathy. Instead, I took some advice from Daniel Tiger…I took a deep breath and counted to four. I went back inside and did my best to get through practice. I knew I had about forty-five minutes until service started and I really wanted to be alone. I hadn’t yet given myself thirty minutes, nor had I written anything to my younger self, although I had started the letter in my head a dozen times. I returned to my car and put the seat all the way back. I pulled my notebook out of my purse and plucked the flowery pen from it’s place between my thermometer and my yellow highlighter. (Yes, I carry a thermometer in my purse.)
Staring at the blank piece of paper, I realized I didn’t even know how to begin. I put the pen to the paper, but that was as far as it went. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to tell her. Did I want her to know what was coming? How do you tell a five-year-old that in just a few months she would smoke her first cigarette, and by sixteen she would be addicted? Or that before her seventh birthday she would know the touch of several grown men? Or that when she is in high school, she will want so badly to be loved that she will make compromises she promised herself she never would? How can you look innocence in the eye and corrupt it? I couldn’t tell her. I found an old, used napkin in the backseat of my car and wiped the free-flowing tears from my cheeks. Alright, I am not going to tell her what is coming, but let me tell her she is loved, and beautiful, and that nothing external could ever change that. That will help her face adversity, won’t it? I already know the answer is no, and that nothing I could tell her will change the way she feels about herself. Although she was loved, she won’t feel loved until she is well into her twenties. And beautiful? She will want to hide anything that resembles beauty to protect herself until she is strong enough to run, to fight, to cry loud enough for someone to hear. This is harder than I thought. It’s been nearly thirty minutes, and I have nothing but a piece of paper with polka-dot tear drops along the bottom. I clean up and go inside for church.
Two weeks later, on Christmas Eve, while I am listening to the testimony of a friend at our annual candlelight service, it hits me. I know what to tell that little blond-haired girl. “It is going to be OK. You are going to suffer more than any child ever should, but years from now you will be standing in a church, next to your husband – who is a good man – holding the hands of your son and your daughter. You will sing Silent Night and it will transport you back to the first time you remember hearing it, when you were five. You will remember sitting on the back porch of your apartment and seeing your first shooting star. That wish that you made, sweet child, it will come true. It is going to be a long, hard road, but I promise you, you will have a happy ending.” That is all she ever needed to know: in the end, it is all going to be OK.
There is a five-year-old in all of us. Perhaps yours is seven, or fifteen, maybe even twenty-five, but there is a part of us that needs to know that it is all going to be OK. The suffering we endured made us stronger, it created the person we are today. Here is the struggle: If we are not happy with who that person is yet, we cannot look our former selves in the eye and promise them that it will all work out. Five years ago, it wasn’t OK. I wasn’t who I wanted to be, and that five-year-old would have been so disappointed in who I had become. I wasn’t ready to face her. It has taken me thirty-three years to reach back through time and assure her that she is OK – that I am OK.
I think my ten-year-old buddy said best. We got on a ride at an amusement park last week that he was afraid to ride. He asked if I would hold his hand, and then said, “I guess it will be OK either way. I have been baptized in Jesus Name, I have received the Holy Ghost, and I know where I am going.” I knew we weren’t going to die on that ride, and I am pretty sure he did, too. But it brought me great joy to know that this young man knows at ten what I just learned – Give it Jesus and it’s all going to be alright.
Uncommonly Common Mom 