Are You Carrying Your Cross Or Just Holding It?

Oh boy, hello third trimester, coming in like a wrecking ball! Honestly it’s probably just been a bad week and things will get better, but whew—it’s been a tough few days.

My hormones were raging this week, I think in large part because I’m starting to see what lack of sleep can do to you. It makes me nervous for when baby is here. For about a week straight I’ve had some bad insomnia and wake up in hip/back/shoulder pain and toss and turn I’d say around ten times a night (maybe more). I’ve tried every position and every soft surface we have in our house. No luck. We have our next ultrasound in two weeks to see where my placenta is at, and I think I’ll prematurely schedule a chiropractor visit for the following day with hopes that it moved and I can get a back adjustment! Stretching helps somewhat, but I also just fully accept that it’s part of the pregnancy package (to an extent).

I’m also finally experiencing that “my stomach and lungs are squished” sensation, and I told my sister today, “Everyone says they can’t breathe in the third trimester, but I didn’t realize what that actually means.” As in, I feel faint or queasy so easily. It’s not just not being able to catch your breath, it’s feeling like hell!

I also got sick all over our bathroom yesterday, the first time yet during pregnancy. Again, I knew vomiting is a thing in pregnancy, but I didn’t know what that actually meant either—dehydration, a sensitive stomach, queasiness you can’t shake, a weird feeling of acids being off, etc.

And we’re only just at the beginning of the third trimester!

But throughout it all, I feel baby’s kicks and am so grateful for that little elbow in my belly button and that foot in my diaphragm. I offer up all of the aches and pains for the women I talk with who are struggling to get pregnant or grieving a loss, and for the war on the womb at large.

And throughout this past week, I couldn’t stop thinking of a phrase Fr. Harry shared in his homily the other day. He talked about how people repeatedly share the same problems or challenges with him, and sometimes they shrug and say, “It’s just my cross, Father.” But I loved how Fr. Harry said he sometimes gently asks, “Yes, but are you carrying your cross or just holding it?”

Sometimes, it’s all we can do to hold it.

When I was going through a tough breakup in my twenties, I remembered an overwhelm of peace when I realized that God wasn’t asking me to thrive during that time but rather, to simply “endure.” I didn’t need to be valiantly resolute in my faith when it felt like I was holding on by a thread. I didn’t need to heroically offer up each pain, fight against the despair, or take on the devil.

But at other times, we do need to lift up our cross and keep moving forward. Maybe even the majority of the time. Shoot, maybe you’re actually always supposed to.

For most of this pregnancy, I felt like I was being asked to hold it. It was total survival mode that first trimester, given my history of loss. I knew I needed to be gentle with myself. The second trimester I started to scout what’s before me. And now in the third, I think it’s time to lift up this cross even higher and carry it forward, homestretch kind of style.

Maybe take this question to prayer, particularly during Stations of the Cross or during the Sorrowful Mysteries, and ask yourself: “Am I carrying my cross, or am I just holding it?”