Shadows Lurking In My MInd

I when Micah was first born, for the first week, I felt terribly overwhelmed by the responsibility of a new parent:
What if I goof up?!
What if I can't do a good job bringing him up?
What if he had a bad accident under my watch?
That sure got me feeling desperate and depressed.

Maybe it was baby blues.
Maybe it was a big chunk of reality in trying to grasp at the whole thing of the responsibility of a parent.

About a week back, a mom at Micah's school mentioned that being a parent sure made her a whole lot more religious:
You just have to pray so much harder because so many things are beyond your control, like who their friends are and what kind of trouble they might get into.

So the other day, while driving alone (I had managed to sneak out in the evening to run an errand), I began to have this cloud hanging over my head.

They were thoughts of doubt, of fear and anxiety. Things beyond my control.
There were so many what if's and if-not's, so many dark thoughts.

It was a short 5 minutes drive from the store to my home, and by the time I reached our house, I just had to brush them all aside, breath a quick prayer of "Have mercy, O Lord," and greet my excited boys, happy to see Mommy with a new supply of milk and juice.

I wonder if my parents worried as much about us while we were growing up.
We had relatively a lot of freedom:

- Walking to kindy and back by myself at 5 (did not involve crossing a road, but had to walk through an alley to get to the block behind our flat in Bukit Bintang. Occasionally they had to send a relative to get me home coz I'd still be playing at the school grounds after everyone had gone back, and sometimes I'd be at a friend's house who stayed on the same block as we did).

- Taking the public bus with only my older sis when I was 10 (she's 2 years older to me).

- Walking home (15 minutes) from a tuition class at 9pm with only my younger sis from age 10 -12 (she's 3 years younger to me).

- Hanging out at a friend's place the whole of a Saturday every week at the age of 12.

- Taking the public bus to school everyday from age 15 -18.

I seriously wonder if I'd be able to give the same kind of freedom to my kids when they come to such and such an age. Maybe things were easier then. Life was not so messy, and not so many crazy people around....

I know my mom now would not let me give such freedom to her grandkids, simply because now there are more bad people out there and people are more desperate then before.

Sigh... so much for progress.