| Finding Hope: My Perspective on Life's Journey | |||
It has been my personal experience and observation of parents of special needs children that we struggle constantly with guilt. When our child is diagnosed with a disability, in our case autism, we wonder if there is something we did to cause the condition. Then we start doing everything we can to fix it, because as parents its our job to make things better for our kids. |
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| I have watched myself and my friends go through a cycle that looks like this. We start advocating, start multiple therapies and investigating options for our children. We have a lot of energy. We read lots of books, do everything we can at home to help our child. Meanwhile, we start neglecting ourselves and the rest of our family. After awhile we start to run down, everything starts becoming overwhelming and we are constantly tired. At this point your child's therapist may begin to say things like, "if you could just do..." and you think to yourself - I can't handle one more thing. | |||
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You look across the dinner table and you don't know your partner anymore. You just want to go out to coffee to talk to someone, but you feel alienated from all of your old friends. There's no more energy for basic things like getting a haircut. Somehow along the way everything has gotten out of control and you don't know yourself anymore.
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| How do you handle it? That's a question
that I'm asked a lot. My answer is faith. I have faith in a personal, loving God who has said He has a
purpose for my life and the life of my son. Let me put it this way,
I have every confidence that God gave me the family I have and the
children I have because He knew I could raise them. That gives me
the peace to rest when I need to. I share with God my concerns and
then I am free to let go of fear and trust a
loving God who has said if I ask for bread He won't give me a stone.
The next question one could ask is how could a loving God do this to my child? Good question, I've cried my eyes out on my knees asking that question. This question caused my heart to ache because I had a secret dream I held in my heart for years. I wanted a "Mama's boy." A little boy who would give me lots of hugs, love to cuddle and tell me "I love you" every time I looked in his eyes. Instead God gave me a little boy that struggled to talk. When he started to converse he was never compelled to say "I love you" so I had to prompt him to say it. Not what I expected. I find solace in the Bible, a book I believe is a letter from God to humanity telling us how much God loves us. In Romans 8 God basically says: The world is fallen, bad heart wrenching things happen to everyone. While you are suffering, I am with you. I know your struggles and I will not leave you. I can make something good come out of your suffering. Someday I will rescue you from this suffering: hold on to that hope! Our oldest son died, and then Geoffrey was diagnosed with autism. How did I handle it? Faith in a loving God who walked me through it one prayer a day, an hour, and sometimes a minute. If you are suffering I pray God will encourage your heart today. Know you are deeply loved.
Questions about faith? Feel free to e-mail me at bonnie@sensoryfun.com.
God bless you today. Copyright © 2007. All rights reserved. |
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