I’d say most of us with a child who has special needs have NEVER said that. I know I haven’t. I do remember one spunky, lively, young first year teacher Joey had who’d previously worked with severely disabled children…much more challenged than the group she had that included our son...had called his classroom of students “brilliant”! Oh how that blessed my heart and made me chuckle all at the same … [Read more...]
More than a Uniform
They couldn’t be any more different. Coach and my son. Coach spends his afternoons and weekends coaching, instructing, and developing high school athletes into skilled baseball players. It’s his passion. He spent so much of his own life on the baseball diamond fueling his own competitive aspirations. He was drafted right out of high school by the Atlanta Braves. He was … [Read more...]
Every Life Matters When God Writes the Story
When I was a little girl, going shopping with my parents was a little scary. Because of Leon. Leon sat in his rusty wheelchair, clothed in rags, his body hunched and dirty, his smile toothless, holding a cup full of pencils for sale in his twisted hand. Most people walked right by, as if he wasn't there, though a few slipped a nickel in the cup and took a pencil. Leon scared me. But he didn't … [Read more...]
ENGAGE or DISTRACT?
Thinking quickly on our feet begins to come naturally as a parent of a child with special needs. Even all these years later, we still do the same for our grown son! So often, even before something happens, we look ahead to how it might turn out in any given the situation. Then, there are the times something is happening in the very moment when we must make on the spot decisions that might help … [Read more...]
the prayer you stopped praying
Can you even remember when you stopped praying for it? That thing you hoped for once upon a time but, as time moved on, faded from that hopeful place? I don't know about you, but I can't. I can't remember when I stopped praying for Zoe to talk. Friends would ask if she said any words, and I would answer yes, because she did. Technically. But, of her four or five words, we were lucky if … [Read more...]
When Life Is Not a Hallmark Card
It’s true. Misery loves company. And probably the reason one of my favorite shows is The Middle, a sitcom about the misadventures of a mid-western family not very unlike my own. Duct-taped appliances? Special needs teens and a seat-of-the-pants mother? Check. It’s a show that makes me laugh because the Hecks (or rather their script writers) “get it”. Life is a daily walk into the precarious … [Read more...]