Growing a Boy: I "just" want to be his mom.

As you can imagine, this school year started with many complexities. My plate is crowded with obligations and responsibilities. Does my son have a disability? Yes. Does he need different scholastic accommodations than traditional students? Yes. Does he require therapy within and outside of the school day? Yes! Do I have other children, a job, and a household to run? Yes. However, there needs to be a surrender in the middle of the chaos.  As our family falls into somewhat of a rhythm of the school year, I find myself anxious. I am asking myself questions like:

o   Am I pushing too hard for supports/accommodations?

o   Is it worth disrupting my son's school day for therapy? (and all the make-up work!)

o   When are too many resources/therapies just that…too many?

o   Do I let him grow “as is” or intervene?

 

I find that my phone is tethered to my side during the school day, “just in case” the school calls to tell me that my son had a seizure or something even more catastrophic. Is this a healthy way to live? No.

 

What if I am "just" his mom? What if I fully surrendered my son to the Lord? I realize that my thoughts and feelings are based on fear and worry. When I live here, life and joy are taken from me.  How, then, do you reconcile the practical everyday questions with the life of surrender and trust? 

In all honesty, I don't want to mess this up...for my son or for myself. I don't want to be so wrecked that I walk around with a perpetual lump in my throat, a pit in my stomach, and a doom cloud floating over my head. Sadly, this is how the days have felt recently. God, just take my anxious thoughts. Allow me to surrender. Can I "just" be my son's mom? Can I stop being an advocate for him? 

In this, I pray for wisdom. I pray for healing. The trauma of his birth just keeps seeping in. I can't help but remember our son fighting for his little life at just days old...the pumps, the tubes, the medications...the many unknowns. I do not want to live a life dictated by the past. My son is alive. That should be enough, right? But the wounds are deep. Life is fragile. The mind is fickle. Help me, Lord. Take control over my heart, mind, and soul. You be the one that fills me, Lord. You be the one to answer the many questions I have. You grow him because today.... today, I "just" want to be his mom.

 

Growing in Faith: Come and Rest

Have you ever wondered how to experience joy when the world around you feels chaotic? This is a question many of us have asked ourselves. Our questions may seem too big or the unknowns...well, too unknown. But we, as humans, have the capability to navigate, persevere, and conquer the mountains in front of us. 

We get to choose our response:

1) We can be raw, vulnerable, real, authentic, and transparent. Yet, this comes at great risk of shifting our chaotic world onto our friendships --or-- being disliked, ignored, or made fun of.

2) Alternatively, we could give the obligatory, standard response, "Everything is okay." "We are just figuring things out, you know, one day at a time." Yet with this response, we remain unseen and unknown.

Neither response is wrong, but isn't there a better way? 

Yes, there is! The answer is found in Jesus. When we carry the burden alone, we can feel hopeless, without a landing place. Jesus came to carry the burden with us and for us. We can surrender and trust that Jesus is faithful. But are we willing? Are we willing to surrender? Are we willing to learn? Are we willing to rest? Jesus can heal even the deepest wounds. We simply get to come and rest.

"Be still and know that I am God."