Trust is a Must

I think trust is a difficult thing. Be it in regular old every day life....or life with diabetes. As children, most of us trusted completely. When our parents told us that if we behaved, we would get to go for an ice cream treat after dinner....we believed them fully...I mean they are our parents, right? When our friends promised us that they would help catch us if we fell on the playground...we believed them...wholeheartedly. It didn't matter that this friend was just as small as us and just a kid too...we believed them...we truly believed that we would be ok.

My best friend, Mandy, and I used to leap frog over the cement posts that lined the driveway of the parking lot to our elementary school at recess when we were little. There were two or three posts that were taller than the rest...to our 8 yr old eyes, the poles seemed 10 feet tall. I remember being scared to leap frog over one...but I didn't want to seem like I was a chicken or weak. I stood there with my hands on the pole afraid to move. Mandy stood in front of me on the other side of the pole...with her arms outstretched...promising me that she would catch me...that I would be ok...that I could do it. In fact, she started singing that old Cyndi Lauper song, "....if you fall, I will catch you...I'll be waiting...time after time." I looked at my best friend and I believed her. I knew that she would catch me. I trusted her...so I did it...and she caught me.

As we get older though, we have experiences in life that cause us to have a harder time trusting people. We may get hurt or betrayed in a relationship...or a friendship...or we may witness some hard reality out in the big bad world that makes it harder for us to trust so fully and so easily. We become guarded...jaded...more aware of the need to protect our hearts and try not to give our trust so freely.

Many of us were told at one point or another that we weren't good enough or we weren't doing a good enough job. Many of us had people doubt us and our abilities. Many of us were compared to others growing up and wound up feeling like we never could possibly measure up.

So, when you throw diabetes into the mix now...I think especially in the beginning, we doubt ourselves even more so. We feel like we can't do it because it's too much...it's too big...it's too scary and it's too overwhelming. We feel like we can't trust ourselves. We feel like we are standing at that proverbial pole...ready to leap frog over it...but frozen to the ground in fear...because there is no one waiting on the otherside...no one to sing Cyndi Lauper for us...no one we can trust so honestly and openly and freely...not even ourselves. The only thing standing on the other side of that pole is diabetes. And sometimes it feels like it's standing there singing something more along the lines of Tom Petty's "Free Fallin" and laughing at us...taunting us.

I think there comes a point in every D-parents life where they realize they must trust in themselves. They must dig deep and truly, honestly, openly, and freely believe in themselves and their ability to do this. We must find our inner Cyndi Lauper and really believe it...believe in ourselves...because at the end of the day, we really are the only ones on this planet that know exactly what our version of this life with diabetes is like.