Being a mom is messy business and I don’t mean in the disorderly home kind. Our children, even before they can walk or talk, have the power to turn our world upside down and our hearts inside out.
My husband, Tom, and I were concerned about our two-year-old’s speech and language development. We decided to have her tested. During the evaluation follow-up, the speech clinician declared our daughter to be aphasic. She said, “I expect she will never go to ‘regular school’, read, calculate math, or hold down a job.”
This did not fit my neatly packaged idea of my child’s life would look like.
My world flipped. Tears came. I grieved. My dream for her faded.
Then I had a “mom epiphany”. Messy moms color outside the lines.
This doom and gloom prediction did not have to be our child’s predetermined course! I stepped out of the educational system’s boundaries and into spiritual freedom. With God nothing is impossible, right? I reasoned, if God chose us to be this little one’s mommy and daddy, he would equip us.
We prayed.
Have Faith.
Fueled by faith, hope, and love, we rolled up our sleeves and got to work. Our child needed direct intervention and we could give it. She needed supernatural intervention and God had that covered.
We learned how to teach language. We used the simple concept of adding on. Start with the noun. Build in adjectives. Include a verb and an adverb.
“Ball, big ball, big red ball, the big red ball can bounce. The big red ball can bounce high.” We were on a roll! Before long she was even stringing words together and singing!
We prayed.
Have Hope.
Our daughter is now twenty-five. I think we would all agree this road has not been an easy one. All three of us had to learn to persevere while keeping our expectations high. Tom and I tried to be proactive, involved, and engaged every step of the way. (This was less appreciated during the teen years!) While we were teaching her to read and do arithmetic, she was teaching us how to have faith and love big.
If the clinician were hired to be a prophet, she would be out of a job. By the grace of God, my daughter graduated from “regular” high school, played in the marching band, reads, and does math (better than me). She just got a promotion at her job of three years, attends Bible Study Fellowship (with me), and goes to college.
My world is still not in a neat order – it’s a bit more complex than I envisioned it to be twenty- some years ago. I’ll admit, even now the hurdles still can bring frustration and tears. Things can still get messy.
I continue to pray for my young adult and about her struggles but God has taught me to let my dream go. It is my daughter’s life. She has her own vision. God has a plan.
And…since she has a big God and a whole mess of grit and strength of character….I know she will be just fine.
Faith, hope, and love abide. The greatest of these is love.
Note to my precious readers:
If the Lord has entrusted you with a special needs child S.E.E.P. into your child’s development.
- Support your child by staying involved.
- Encourage success by breaking learning into smaller chucks and celebrate victories.
- Expectations remain high but reasonable.
- Persevere in prayer and action.
You are your child’s best advocate. Listen to the experts but keep in mind the influences that are not factored in: your and your child’s determination and God’s supernatural intervention.
How do you help your special needs child or support a friend who has a special needs child?
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