my two cents on a very controversial subject

I am the parent of 3 children.
My oldest is neurochemically atypical. I with my special ed degrees and 16 years of experience feel that he shares characteristics of a person with very high functioning Asperger's and ADHD. The neuropsych team felt that he has anxiety and sensory processing disorder with ADHD (like Asperger's?). Tomato, tomatoe... Either way I have a need for a highly structured environment in my home, I have to explain things in literal black & white terms, and state all of my expectations clearly in small steps right now in order to give my son the tools he needs to build the tools for adulthood.

My daughter is affected by hypotonic cerebral palsy. Cerebral palsy is a stroke that occurs before, during, or shortly after birth resulting in a muscular abnormality present since birth that doesn't get better and doesn't  get worse. The muscle function may get better or worse but the overall make up of the muscles is not degenerative and isn't going to magically get better.

These disorders are not related, I could not have landed with 2 disabilities that are further apart. the Autism spectrum may have genetic components but as far as I know there isn't a family history of this... not granted I don't know half of my husband's genetic history and I don't know half of my Nana's genetic history, and I really don't know about much of half of my own family medical history.
I get asked more often than you might realize, "what caused this?"

"did you get sick when you were pregnant?"
-----Yes, everyone gets sick when they're pregnant, I even took antibiotics (GASP!)

"did you vaccinate your kids?"
-----Yes, I vaccinated all of the children. Their behavior did not change after vaccination and if the chemicals had any sort of interaction in their brains then I genuinely feel that my son would have eventually presented with these characteristics even if I had chosen not to vaccinate.

"were you on meds when you were pregnant?"
-----Yes, all of my small fetuses were exposed to medicine approved by authorities of western medicine.

"were there birth complications?"
-----No, there weren't any valid birth complications. If the cause were birth complications then Cole would have had CP and Faith and Davin would have been typical. Cole was born via unplanned c-section.

"did you do anything that you haven't asked forgiveness for?"
-----No, I don't think any of my sinful behavior caused any of the disabilities present in my family.
We all sin, if this were how the world works there would be no typical people to compare my kids to. Jesus paid for my sins, my kids don't have to pay for my sins.



Here's my opinion on why my children were born with some different needs:

I'm lucky!!!

Seriously, we live in a broken freaking world with chemicals in our food that we as a species really haven't seen until this last century. We live in a world where people get cancer, they die too young, we have disease, famine, and loss all around us. Our world has this whole environmental thing going on and we haven't had the tools long enough to study how our actions will impact our world or if global warming is simply a natural cycle that we (people) haven't been around long enough to see. come full circle.

I'm sure there's a little bit of everything mixed into the truth that we haven't found.

So... I don't consider these disabilities a tragedy (that's another blog). I don't think there is any one cause for how my children are made up. I know that I believe in the truths in the Bible which says say God knew my kids before they were in my womb and I know that God knew every challenge they would face. Every child has a unique contribution to this world and if I didn't have a daughter with cerebral palsy who is going to be a princess when she grows up, or a son who sees everything very literally and will be a great leader when he's an adult, or another son who loves to dress in his Sunday best every day and wants to play bagpipes and be a chef then my world would be vastly different. My kids just like your kids add something to the world that would be missing if they were any different. They've taught me lessons about myself and how I look at things, they light the room with their smiles.  Each person adds something to life that no one else can fill.

I'm really ok to accept that there isn't a "cause" for a disability. I have never felt like a disability is a disability, it's simply a different way to contribute to life. I accept that these lives are perfectly and wonderfully made out of my control and I alone did not influence their abilities or disabilities. I'm writing this because I hope that someday this way of looking at abilities will be adopted by more people and maybe we can embrace disabilities and empower people to contribute to our world in any way they can.

a life verse for me

I am doing this online bible study, it's based on a book called "A Mended Heart". I've just finished chapter 4 and while I have gleaned quite a bit, I don't think I'm to the part where I personally have found mending.
One of the emails that they sent out had a guide for finding your life verse. I have had a few of these verses in my lifetime and while I wasn't raised in the word as much as a lot of people I can tell you the top 3 verses the Lord has given me even when I didn't have the word or before I was mature enough to spend time each day in God's word.

I'm going to have a milestone birthday tomorrow, July 3rd. I'm going to be 30. Gone are my twenties and while there were some great times (like my wedding and the birth of my children), and losing weight was a lot easier. Frankly, aside from the number I'm happy to see what this new decade will bring me and I thought I should approach it with an open heart and go ahead and try their life verse system to get off on the right start.

They had a cute PDF and I just used the comment feature in adobe to write directly on it,
Step 1:  write down what you need from God.
Step 2: what are your strengths and passions?
Step 3: what central themes do you see out of those two things (in hindsight I could have used a venn diagram) :-)
Step 4: They recommended a search in bible gateway with those key words and for you to pray about the verses that stand out to you. You could use the concordance in the back of your bible if you aren't in to the online thing.
Step 5: pick a verse and make it personal, You can verse map it, post it around you, pray about it, look at the context for sure, make it personal and something that sticks in your mind that you can go to when you just need an anchor.

Well, I searched and searched and I looked at my key words. I found many beautiful verses. Some new, and some familiar; all of them spoke something to me. None of them stood out as something that really made the bigger picture that would be an anchor. They just represent something I see in this season of my life which is great but not what I was praying for in a life verse.

I went back to some of my old favorites, verses that have stuck with me through the years and have really been what I needed when I needed to hear it.
Proverbs 3:5 - the first verse I ever memorized! I was 10 when I memorized this verse. This verse was my "go-to" as a baby Christian, When I was a small child I had a lot of confusing hurtful times and they all came to a head when I was in high school. It was truly the darkest time in my life and it took some year to heal and and come to a place where I can embrace it all. If didn't know much but I did know that God knows more than me and if I just kept walking and trusting beyond my own understanding, somehow I would be ok. I couldn't have backed it up in a theological discussion but my heart knew it's truth and that was good enough.
Hebrews 12:1 -  As a parent and as a wife and a Christian woman in this world sometimes life feels like a marathon. With the kids especially... I have compared many times having a child with special needs to running a marathon. Now I have never run 26.2 miles all at once but I have actually run 13.1 miles 4 times in 4 weeks. I can give some awesome comparisons and I'm pretty sure somewhere in this blog I have discussed it once or twice.

...and finally, and oldie but a goodie that I have concluded really is my life verse-
2 Corinthians 12:9-10 - Over the years, it was my rock when I was going through those years of healing and finding peace with some of my childhood. It was taped inside the cabinet of our first home and I looked at it every day as a new mom and cried and prayed this verse as we lost income and eventually lost everything including the house. It always somehow had a literal application and I always needed it for something along the way. I feel sometimes that God has just given me a lot of opportunities to grow in my life. he's given me a multitude of blessings and always provision but also an equal amount of times when I walked through some heat in order to me made better. 
This morning though as I read through the whole chapter around this verse I saw it in a new light. I've read the context before but I was really praying and reflecting and wanting to see things differently. Like any great life verse I see different layers of it in different seasons of  life and here is what I discovered this morning-
Paul wrote Corinthians, in chapter 12 we come in and he is talking about how he has seen Jesus and he was there when he ascended and there are things he doesn't understand but this experience and knowing Jesus is worth bragging about. He says there is nothing for him to brag about for himself except the times when he was weak because he was made strong by Jesus and that is worth bragging about. In verses 7-8 he talks about the thorn in his side and how three times he asked it to be removed but how God told him that it was through this thorn that he was being used and blessed. As I prayed and reflected on this I was reminded that this verse is not only great for encouragement when you're walking through trials but also a great reminder of what God has brought you through and how even though your past may be difficult, it's worth bragging about. 

In this new decade of my life and new season of my life - now being gainfully employed, having a career, my children being school-aged (agh!), and having hope of buying a home again in the near future and having this fresh start feeling- I feel like this verse serves as a different kind of anchor; it is a reminder to be thankful for things good and bad and to not just feel good that those trials are over but to in fact be boastful for how we have come through these things because that's how awesome our God is! 
We're going to have thorns, I still have an auto-immune disease that doesn't have a name that keeps me close to God - every day when I wake up I think that whatever God wants me to get done today, he will make it so and I can only do it with him and we get a lot done! 
Birthdays are what you make them, all things in life are what you make them; I choose to use this birthday to reflect and feel boastful about the last 30 years and this crazy awesome roller coaster ride with God at the controls.
and so...
 God reminds us when we think of walking through trials "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. 10 That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delightin weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

a mother's day reflection

Every year I have to make a choice.
Each year my choice is based on the biblical concept that I heard in a sermon once "act first and your heart will eventually follow". Each year I am rewarded and I evolve a little more.

Mother's day has historically not been my favorite holiday. It is a painful reminder of a person who is supposed to be honored who hurt me beyond belief and beyond repair and on top of that every time I chose my mother over my step mother in hopes of earning a normal relationship she brushed aside my efforts and gave me only rejection.
I flash back to one such mother's day, I had a visitation with my mom and at school I had worked really hard on a project, it wasn't much but I put everything into it thinking that if it was good enough she would take me into her arms and never forget to come get me for visitations and never forget to feed me and she would want me and be able to take care of me and love me and not make fun of me and never hurt me somehow I could accomplish all this by coloring a paper doily with all her favorite colors for her to remember how beautiful I could make her life.
So that mother's day came and I had some other project with me but most of all for some reason I wanted her to have this colorful doily that I had painstakingly worked on and colored each little lattice with a different color. It truly was beautiful and it happens to be the only mother's day I remember sharing with my bio mom. I kept my presents a secret and on Sunday morning I made her coffee just the way she liked it, black with 3 spoonfuls of sugar. I brought her the coffee and I brought her my presents saving my treasured doily until last. She put the coffee down absent mindedly and splashed a little bit on the table and then opened one of my presents and I don't remember was it was but she put it to the side. and she opened a candle that I had made at the mall with my Nana for this occasion and she said it was pretty. I presented her with my doily and she looked at it blankly. I explained how I used all her favorite colors and how long I worked on it and how she could put it somewhere special and think of me if she wanted to. She accepted all of it and gave me a hug and said thank you, my plan was working I thought! Then as quickly as I felt happy, it all crashed. My mom is mentally ill and she's capable of switching from happy to crazy in the blink of an eye but I didn't know or understand this when I was 9. So she switched and looked at me coldly and asked me if I had packed to go home and took my doily and crumpled it and used it to wipe up the coffee that had been splashed onto to the table. She was cold for the next hour until I went back home to Boise. I cried for days and wondered what I could have done differently. I know I must have had other mother's day with her but that is the only one I can remember. That relationship with my mom never did come together, she never did become that loving involved mom who didn't hurt me.
Fast forward...
My first Mother's day was a real struggle, I had terrible PPD and then to top it all off I realized that no one had ever had ever felt for me the way I felt for my baby from the same perspective. My mother had never loved like that. God really used that time to clean out those wounds and to begin to heal them. It wasn't fun but it was a good start,  As years passed I began to appreciate this day and really focus on the people who had been there for me. Becoming a mother drew me a lot closer to my step-mom and our relationship took on a whole new level which brought healing. I also was blessed to see an example of what honoring you mother looked like as I walked through this holiday with my husband and his mom. My relationship with my mother in law is great but it took a lot of work in those early days; again, mother's day began to heal some of that as I did the right thing and acted knowing eventually my heart would follow.
I have seen a lot of healing in Mother's day and have come to appreciate it as a day to honor women who have loved me as their own and been there for me.
2012- My Nana died. My world shook, even the thought of her makes me burst into tears and it's been almost 3 years since we lost her. She was the first woman who nurtured me, loved me, rocked me, saved me from unspeakable horrors, led me to the Lord, and was always on my side. So Mother's day has taken a bit of a backslide again.

Here I am; May 10, 2015 and I recite to myself all the verses that are hidden in my heart about the Lord being my heavenly parent and about God's love for me. Those verses even when I'm not feeling it are truth, and truth always conquers emotion.
SO... I make the choice to honor women who did not give birth to me but have loved me as along as they have been there for me. I make the choice to give myself permission to feel a little sad and then look at the living world and not get caught up in what I've lost. I make the choice to hug my children and remind myself that we can flip this holiday because I'm a mom and I'm not sucking at it. Each of my kids brought me treasures from school and I was delighted and very careful to show care with their gifts and show them outwardly how those gifts made me feel. I make the choice to trust that whoever I honor will accept my gifts of love as enough and know that they come from a place of love where I did my best on yet another tight budget.
I act first and then today or tomorrow my heart follows and I an overwhelmed with gratitude.  I have many women who have come along side me. I don't just have one mom, I have many and I can be thankful for all of them, even those who are not with me in this season of life. My husband honors me as a wife and as the mother of his children and those amazing children who love me and write the sweetest things that show me the fruit of all of my love.
This Mother's day if you are coming from a place of pain, maybe somehow you can find a grain of truth here and cling onto it. In the end truth conquers emotion and while it's great to feel and acknowledge emotion, it is a choice to find beauty and hope in the midst of that emotion.