Lately I have felt so unsatisfied. Nothing has changed. My life is the same as always. I am still patiently waiting for Sophie’s recovery, putting bandaids on symptoms again and again and again. The bills are still late. The house still needs cleaning. The kids keep out growing their clothes, threatening me with becoming teenagers. Sophie still isn’t potty trained. I still am not homeschooling the way I would like to. I didn’t spend the time with my girls that I wanted to, or if I did then I neglected something else. Nothing has changed.
I feel like I am always chasing something just out of my reach. How many times have I saved money or waited through adjustment periods to add the one new supplement, hoping that it would have the effect it had on some other child and she will wake up and be cured? One after another they fall, like the clean dishes I spend the end of my day forcing myself to wash.
Yes, I am being gloomy again, but more than that, I am pondering. How much am I missing? Sophie is 5 right now and as much as I want her to be the 5 I dreamed of for her, that isn’t what I have. As much as I want to be that perfect mom with a perfect home and a perfect marriage that isn’t what I have either, but what I have is pretty good.
It is so easy to be lazy in my thoughts. It is easy to let life’s burdens make me feel tired and worn down. It steals the joy of my triumphs way too soon. This is the biggest battle I am fighting, to keep my mind disciplined, to counter the thoughts of hopelessness and to see the grasping for wind as what it is.
How much of the beauty of every day will I miss? How much of my little girl’s childhood is fading as I chase after the childhood I want for her?
Right now she is here and she is 5. She loves to snuggle and hates puppets. She screams and giggles when the wind hits her on breezy days and she thinks the word “oops” is hysterically funny. She is my precious Sophie.
Lord, help me to see the divine in the every day, help me to find the treasure that you have hidden for me in every part of my life, don’t let me miss any sacred thing.
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3 Comments
I stumbled across your blog today, and have been reading through some of your past posts. My little girl is 5, too, and like Sophie, is autistic. We, too, have our shares of ups and downs.
One of your older posts was entitled, “Why do people seem so afraid of trying to cure autism?” You stated that you would fight for your child no matter what and never give up. If I might answer that post in this one, I would say to you this: the reason many people do not like to focus on “curing” autism or “recovering” their child from autism is that it creates far too many days like you are having today, where you “patiently wait” for your child to be normal and fail to appreciate the beauty that is there right now. Kristina Chew, another blogging autism mom (who has fought long and hard for her son, and still does) has stated that focusing on recovery can be “distracting” - you end up focusing on the cure and not on the process of helping your child develop, learn and grow as much as she or he is able. “I started to realize that I was valuing “recovering” Charlie (whatever that meant) over cheering on, appreciating, celebrating the small gains Charlie made and, too, life with Charlie.”
I don’t think it is impossible to both focus on recovery for your child AND still appreciate your child and your life as they are right now. But that future-focus makes it a lot harder. I think it’s much more peaceful to fight daily for your child, try EVERYTHING that might help their functioning, while keeping your focus on TODAY, not the tomorrow when they are ‘cured.’ “Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself.” Matthew 6:34
Comment by Shannon on May 10th, 2009 @ 4:52 pmYou make a wonderful point Shannon. A very timely one also. Thank you!
Comment by Sarah on May 10th, 2009 @ 11:03 pmLine and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>
amen sister…amen…
with tears streaming down my cheeks…i whole-heartedly understand…i was too tired tonight to put my words into print…thank you for doing it for me.
in His Love,
heather
Comment by heather on March 23rd, 2009 @ 8:20 pm