Gosh, I saw this prompt and thought as a new mom for the entirety of a pandemic (to the week) this has been a theme in my life. We love to travel, I love to run, and we love being together with our people, BUT we have a little guy who has ben relying on me minute by minute and we have high risk family members so where do we draw the line?
It was easier to navigate at the beginning of E’s life because we were too exhausted to think about much, and my hormones were so all over the place I got to have a final say a lot of the times. And when the cases dropped late summer and early fall we felt ok traveling on a small scale to see new places. We set boundaries, no indoor dining except for the very early morning breakfast shift at Disney because not many people are up at 6:30 with a 7 month old on vacation. We said no to anywhere we needed to fly. We only rented places that had advanced cleaning protocols in place. We drew a line in the sand. For me it meant no group runs, and the one race I did that did not implement strict COVID protocols felt too risky.
But now it’s hard. E is turning 1 next month, we want to do a blow out. We are ready to travel again as cases start to drop, I want to do races which come with its own logistical nightmare. Jon has to go in more for work with his new promotion, I need a little bit more care with my running load. And now Elijah is at school some during the week. The amount of variables even for this Enneagram Eight is a lot to navigate. Oh and did I mention we still have those high risk family members that don’t want to miss out completely on E’s first year.
Maybe this isn’t about a risk not worth taking, but more about the reality that every day has 10 variables you can see and 60 you can’t. It doesn’t make planning fun like it used to, but that fact has helped me stay more grounded in the present. So whether it’s a risk you do or a risk you don’t, maybe we can all agree to live more presently and we can take that with us after the pandemic is over. If we don’t, we miss some of what God has for us in the details he cares so much about.
Fueling Her Forward 