A True Story

“SLOW DOWN!” I yell with all the desperation of a mom trying to avoid a trip to the ER while on vacation.

(Okay, it wasn’t a vacation. It was a trip. Let’s call it a trip. Vacations involve a cabin with no one around for miles, cozying up by a fireplace with a glass of wine in hand next to my husband. Or sitting on a beach chair, digging my toes in the sand, only looking up from my book to soak in the sound and sight of the crashing waves in front of me. That is a vacation.

We were on a trip. We traveled to attend a family wedding, and I managed to get everyone in decent clothes with only one child melting down about the shoes he had to wear. Overall, success.)

The day after the wedding, we trek out to a state park to hike. I need some nature. I need the calming effect of aromatic pine trees and the crunch of leaves under my feet, the relief of letting my kids run around instead of trying to squeeze their behavior into the box of indoor public places.

“Can we run up that hill?” one child asks, pointing toward the steep incline ahead. “Sure! You guys are like the Igiby kids!” my husband calls as they run off the trail into the woods, just like the three kids from the book he’d been reading them.

I don’t say anything. Generally speaking, I don’t veer off paths set in front of me. I go where I’m supposed to go, trying to avoid unnecessary risks or getting in trouble. What kind of trouble I think I’ll get in by taking a few steps off the beaten path, I don't know. The compacted pine needles and bent branches to my right show that plenty of others have turned off the main trail. But not me. I set my eyes straight ahead, anxious about the adventuresome spirit of my kids and gripping my plastic water bottle a little tighter with every step.

The leaves have just started to turn, their deep green shifting to yellow or red, as if they’d been dipped in a bucket of paint. The ground beneath my feet softens the farther I walk, turning from hardened dirt to a mix of leaves and sand. Signs along the path tell us we’ll end up at the beach. Even on a trip, with four kids in tow, a beach sounds promising.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see my daughter running down the side of the large hill. Her center of gravity is off, I can tell she’s about to topple forward unless she leans hard backward and digs her heels into the dirt. I yell. I feel the cheap water bottle crinkle in my hand. She leans backward and skids to a painful-looking stop about ten feet from where I stood. I breathe deeply, grateful she didn’t end up face planting into the ground.

“You have to slow down!” I try to keep my volume down, but I’m upset. Not really upset at her, at least I don’t think so; but I take it out on her. I’m scared. I envision not just a bump and bruise, but broken limbs and bleeding head wounds. I can’t help but notice the basketball-sized rocks poking their heads out of the ground, just hidden enough to surprise a seven-year-old, just present enough to cause head trauma. I hate this about myself sometimes––I don’t really want to have the ability to predict the worst case scenario.

I didn’t used to live scared. I flew across the world by myself when I was a teenager. I trekked around Egypt with my college roommate, hitchhiked in Switzerland, worked in some hard places, stood up for myself with difficult people. I (mostly) made educated decisions and took (mostly) calculated risks. Some of them were dumb, to be sure, and I have zero doubts God protected me more than a few times. But I certainly didn’t live in the fear I live with now.

But that was when there was just me. That was before my heart started walking around on four small pairs of legs. That was before the high risk pregnancy and the NICU stays and the trouble with weight gain (the infants, not me), the DCFS visit, the child who fell out the window, the hormone imbalances, the incessant googling of symptoms. I felt fear before having kids, of course. But back then, I was only responsible for myself. I could choose to take risks or avoid them. My daily life was not intricately woven together with the lives of a spouse and kids.

Now, especially as I get older, there are only so many risks I can hold my kids back from taking. And I don’t want to hold them back. I don’t want to keep them from climbing hills and scurrying up trees and trying new tricks on their bikes. I want them to travel and explore and do hard things with courage. I want them to grow up knowing the difference between good and bad risks. Too often, in this season, I live like all risks are bad.

My daughter whimpers for a minute, but she brushes the dirt off her pants, checks her hands for scrapes, and walks toward me. And then I see my oldest son coming down the hill at a pace far too fast for this mama to be comfortable. “ELIJAH!!! STOOOOPPPPPP!!!!” This time I’m extra loud. There’s a tree only a few feet in front of him, and again, my mind runs amuck and I picture him slamming into it. In real life, he skids to a stop, falling on his backside, at least eight feet away from the tree. He’s fine—except for the tears streaming down his face because Mom panicked and probably scared the living daylights out of him.

The water bottle in my hand is completely crushed by my anxiety. I try to explain to my son about the tree. I stumble through my words, trying to tell him why I was so scared but also realizing maybe I overreacted. Maybe they were taking good risks, the kind that may result in a few scratches, but the kind that teaches them the physics of their own body and the consequences of their own choices. Maybe they were taking a risk that was fine—one that was maybe even (although I have a hard time understanding it these days) fun.

The twins are okay, and we keep walking. I kick some dirt up the path and mutter to my husband, “Why did you let them do that?” We bicker for a couple minutes before he catches up with our middle son and I walk hand-in-hand with my daughter. I want someone to blame. I want some place to put my fear. The truth is that nothing even happened. My son and daughter climbed a hill. They came down fast and fell on their butts. That’s really the end of the story.

But I told myself a much bigger story. I told myself a story of a seemingly inevitable hospital visit, a broken arm, a hurt child, a ruined trip. I lived as if that was the true story, not the one playing out in front of me. Then when my made up narrative didn’t happen, I turned on my husband in an effort for my anxiety to make some sense.

I don’t like unknowns. I want everyone to stay on the path and follow the signs and don’t go too fast or veer to the left or the right. But that’s not life; that’s control. And I guess if I’m going to help these small people grow up to be big people who can navigate a walk through a much larger wood in a healthy way instead of being paralyzed by fear, I have to let them move. I have to let their legs run and their minds think and their emotions feel. And maybe, I have to let them get a few scrapes along the way, too.

Our feet keep moving forward, and the path levels out underneath us. I breathe deeply, reminding myself of the true story we’re living, not the scary one in my head. We spot a few deer across the path to our left and stop to observe a group of tall, bare trees standing like soldiers. My shoes sink a little deeper into the ground below my feet, cocoa colored dirt changing to sand the shade of oatmeal. Waves crash in the distance. The hard ground softens and we walk underneath an awning of branches until we see the shoreline of Lake Michigan.

We emerge from the woods and my kids shout, “THIS IS THE BEST DAY EVER!” I tell them to put their shoes and socks to the side so we don’t lose them, and then they take off running. Before I even make it down the sand dune to the lake, my two boys are soaking wet, their sweatshirts sopping with cold Midwest water.

“I didn’t bring any extra clothes, boys. You’re going to have to walk back like that.” I manage to keep my voice light, offering them a half smile as I shake my head.

I take a breath and watch them play chase with the waves crashing on the shoreline. Despite the cool weather, the boys get wet from head to toe within thirty seconds. They turn toward the dunes behind us. “Can we go up there?” my son calls. “Go for it!” I say, trying to sound more confident and less worried than I feel. They run up and down the giant hills of sand, occasionally flopping dramatically on their bottoms to rest. I roll my eyes and shake my head at them. I start to think about them getting sick from the cold or a host of other unlikely but possible scenarios. But I stay quiet. They’re fine. They’re happy. That’s the true story unfolding in front of my eyes.

A woman with her dog walks by my loud and energetic kids, glancing at them with a smile as she continues her walk down the beach. My husband follows the kids up the hill, chasing them playfully while I stay grounded on the beach below, holding the baby. I turn back and look out across the giant lake, letting the waves kiss my bare feet. The water is colder than I expect. But refreshing. I breathe deeply a few more times, letting my fear release with each exhale. And I realize I’m fine—and here in this moment, even happy, too.

P.S. If you loved this essay, you'll love our podcast, What I Wish I Had Known with Shauna Niequist.

Sarah J. Hauser is a writer and speaker living in the Chicago suburbs with her husband and four kids. Through theology, stories, and the occasional recipe, she helps others find nourishment for their soul. She loves cooking but rarely follows a recipe exactly, and you can almost always find her with a cup of coffee in hand. Her first book, All Who Are Weary: Finding True Rest by Letting Go of the Burdens You Were Never Meant to Carry (Moody) releases in April, 2023. Check out her monthly newsletter or find her on Instagram.

Photo by Jennifer Floyd.