By Sarah Hauser
@sarah.j.hauser

“I just need to lay down for a few minutes,” I tell my husband, Colson, as soon as he walks in the door from work. It’s been a day, and I can feel the exhaustion in every muscle. The head cold making its way through our home seems to have camped out with me longer than everyone else. I also feel like I’ve been on the verge of throwing up pretty much all day long. 

I collapse into bed, basking in the quietness of my room. Not three minutes later, I hear screaming. 

You know the kind—it’s more than a tantrum and more than a bump or bruise. I should probably go see what’s going on. 

I throw off my comforter and stomp down the stairs, a bit too annoyed at the audacity of my child to interrupt my precious alone time with her yelling. 

“What’s going on?” I ask Colson, with more than a hint of frustration.

“Izzy fell. I think it’s bad.” 

I turn to my six-year-old daughter, the one who’s been screaming, the one I’m annoyed with for disturbing my peace. She gingerly holds up her arm, tears of pain still streaming down her face.

I take one glance at that arm, and my frustration melts into compassion. There’s no blood, but I know enough anatomy to know bones aren’t meant to bend that way. 

“We have to call the doctor. That’s definitely broken,” I say as I quickly look away from her. A head cold plus a new pregnancy plus the unsightly look of my daughter’s arm leaves me feeling more than a little nauseated. 

Colson calls the doctor and soon after carefully buckles Izzy in the car to take her to urgent care. I’m in no state to go myself. My incessant coughing and nasty-sounding congestion would only get me side-eyes from others in the waiting room during this pandemic season.

I wait at home with my boys, feeling less than brave, less than okay. I’m not even the one hurt, but it’s like my own body hurts with hers. 

Colson texts me updates from the doctor’s office, and finally they call me from the car on the way home. He and Izzy sound upbeat. “How are you feeling, sweetheart?” I ask. “Better,” she says, without hesitation. Then I lose it. I feel the tears welling up in my body, almost like they’re coming from the deepest part of my gut. My shoulders shake and I bury my face in my hands. All the tension and fear and worry I’ve held inside for the past few hours releases like a dam breaking. 

“I’m so glad you’re feeling better,” I try to say in between my own sobs. “I’ll see you soon.”

“Okay, Mommy,” she says, her voice soft but positive. She’s handling this better than me, I think. I hang up the phone before my own crying scares my currently calm daughter. A few minutes later, I hear them walk into the house. Her arm is wrapped in a temporary cast and resting in a sling. I hug her, relieved and grateful. But a tightness remains in my chest. I hate seeing my kids hurt.

The next day, Colson takes her to the doctor to get a hard cast—a pink one, of course. She’s brave and bold, even though they have to reset her bone while they tighten that cast. It’s good Colson is there instead of me. Resetting bones doesn’t exactly help calm pregnancy nausea, and just the thought of what they had to do makes my stomach flip. But she’s a rockstar at the doctor’s; I’m a sobbing mess at home. 

Over the next few weeks, I take her back for follow-up X-rays, a new cast, and even more X-rays. I feel well enough to be the one to go with her, and we get used to walking the long hallway between the orthopaedic surgeon’s office and radiology. Each time, we hold hands and I ask how her arm feels. “Better,” she quietly says. I can tell she’s nervous, but she’s still calm and composed, her eyes focused ahead and her hand relaxed in mine.

She now knows how to position her arm the right way in the X-ray machine. She more confidently answers the doctor’s questions, even though she’s shy. She doesn’t mind the scary sound of the saw cutting through her cast. She’s learned that even though breaking her arm hurts, she’ll heal, and even when she’s scared, she can be brave.

But me? Not so much. During those first few doctor visits, I sat at home nursing my own cold and feeling anything but brave. I let the “what ifs” run rampant through my brain, my “worst-case scenario” thinking in full force. What if she needs surgery? What if her arm doesn’t heal properly? What if this is one of those crazy stories of going to the doctor for something minor and they end up finding cancer or another life-threatening disease? Kids break their arms all the time, and I knew she was probably fine. But my fear too often wins out over courage, and worry overtakes any semblance of peace.

I know there’s more heartbreak ahead, more tears to be shed over my kids, more times I’ll feel their hurt in my own body. There’s pain to come that can’t be healed by being wrapped in a bright pink cast for a few weeks. Sometimes I wonder how much more my mama heart can take. If it already hurts this much with the relatively small things, how will I possibly handle their deeper griefs, the ones much worse than a bone break, more painful than what a doctor can fix? 

The truth is, I don’t know. I don’t know what my kids will go through. I don’t know what wounds they’ll face and how quickly they’ll heal—or if they’ll heal at all. But my daughter has shown me what bravery looks like. She’s shown me resilience. She’s shown me how to take the pain that’s handed to you and keep going, even when you’re scared.

As my kids grow up, I’ll continue to feel pieces of their pain as if it were my own. But I pray they’ll keep being brave, that they’ll put one foot in front of the other, come what may. 

And I pray as I watch them deal with hurts of all kinds, I can be a little bit brave, too.