Stepping Into Shoes

We often hear ourselves saying "I wear many hats," but what we don't always talk about are the numerous shoes we step into every day.

Being a mom means feeling quite alone...

I am the only one on this planet who is going on three hours of sleep.

No other mother has to deal with a sick dog and a sick child at the same time.

Those other moms, the ones who publish novel after novel, 

they all have full-time, live-in nannies, right?

Everyone else is having a date night, while I'm the only one alone in a house with sleeping children.

But blogging let's us know, despite our reservation to trust it, that in fact, we are not alone. Quite possibly in this very moment another mom is alone in front of her computer, with her little ones tucked asleep, her husband deployed half-way around the world, and she is lonely.

I tentatively try to step into her shoes.

And she isn't the only one. I attempt to imagine what it might feel like to be in the shoes of the mom who locked her keys and children inside her car or in the shoes of the dad who coaches his son's soccer team or in the shoes of the mom who works 50 hour weeks or in the shoes of the mom who is single and deploys, leaving her child with her elderly mother or the dad who comes to the playground every day with his children and stares at his phone the entire time...

Several years ago I listened to a man giving a talk about measuring sticks.

He asked us, "Do you measure the people around you with your own personal measuring stick?"

He continued on to question "Who are you to measure someone else's morals and actions with your own stick?"

And I looked around, I still look around sometimes, and realize I am judging. I am assuming I know what a person is thinking, feeling, living.

But I don't.

Who am I to judge?

When my hair has gone unwashed for two days, my shirt has stains, my two-year-old's mouth is showing evidence of the morning's breakfast, and my four-year-old's sassy mouth is drawing attention, I wonder "Is someone judging me?" They don't know the whole story of why we all appear this way. They only see the surface of the moment.

And that is all they get.

So I tuck my measuring stick away. I've learned to appreciate the challenges of being a parent, and know that many others have it a lot rougher than me:

A mom who gives birth to twin boys with four other children at home and her husband deploys a month later.

Parents who deal with fear on a daily basis that their five-year-old's disease may take her life. 

A father who is struggling to understand why his four-year-old daughter refuses to talk after her mother, his wife, left them...

Stepping into shoes... I don't know if it makes a difference, but at least it reminds me not to judge, not to think I am alone, and not to believe no one has it rougher than me. It helps me to appreciate every moment I have every day.