Believing What I Don’t See

 I suppose I wasn’t alone in not knowing exactly what I should do or be in this life when I entered the college scene. I have learned that most of us are still figuring that out along the way, as long as we live. But one dream was etched in my heart to never be erased and it was the one thing I wanted that I felt like I HAD to do. I had to be a mother. I longed for a family of three kids since I was old enough to think about it but after meeting and later marrying my husband, we thought we would just see about that. But I could hardly wait for the time to be right to hold my first newborn baby in my arms. After recovering from a heart wrenching miscarriage, I was excited  and anxious all at once with my next positive pregnancy test and started again the process of day dreaming about who my child would be, who they would look like, adorable outfits and mommy and me classes, followed by school years and the many activities my child would want to experience in his or her life. On Friday the 13th in October 2006 my dream of motherhood was fulfilled as I heard the first cry of my beautiful baby boy and got to hold him near me. I didn’t know in that moment that the dreams I dreamed were not going to play out the way I thought. When my sweet boy Lucas was still just an infant, I saw his development didn’t seem to measure up to what I was reading in Parent magazine. By the time we reached his 9 month check up, I was answering “no” to the checklist of milestones appropriate for his age. He got early intervention services to address his delays at one year of age and by 19 months old he was given an autism diagnosis. But we were still waiting for genetic tests to be returned to us then, and after one huge mistake from his medical team, a redraw on blood and another two month wait, we got those results. Fragile X Syndrome. I had never even heard of it until one of our pediatricians made mention of it among the list of things he felt Lucas should be tested for. It turned out I carry a gene for a broken X chromosome. I have one good X chromosome and one that is less than. My son got the bad one and in him it became fully mutated for the first time in the history of my family where the gene must have been passed down for generations undetected. But now, in light of his global developmental delays, low muscle tone, hyper flexible joints, prominent ears and large forehead that are common indicators of Fragile X, it was quite detectable and impacted our lives greatly. God helped me fully accept what was and be grateful for the many daily miracles I got to witness in the life of my son. He is now in his early teen years and has brought us a lot of joy and taught us everything about life that was important. He made us better. I never wanted to change the experience of having him the way he was, even though I pray for him to become more like his peers and able to live normally with a lot of independence as he grows up. I believe for a cure or healing to manifest in ways. But I decided early on to not waste time wishing for something different and lamenting what I didn’t get when I became his mom. I didn’t wish to change it but I didn’t wish to have more than one special needs child either, So the quick decision was made when we knew about Fragile X that we would not be having any more biological children. We would adopt when it was the right time so that Lucas would have a sibling and not be alone and we would get to help a child who needed a forever family and we hoped to experience some of what normal parenting must be like when we did bring the child who was meant for us home. But as Lucas grew and we kept searching different avenues for adoption, the doors kept slamming shut. Nothing was working. I followed when I thought we were supposed to go a certain way and it just didn’t pan out, so I had begun praying a lot over Lucas getting a sibling and why adoption wasn’t going in our favor because we thought it was a good thing to do and we didn’t want Lucas to grow up alone. We wanted him to have at least one forever friend. By now he was 9 years old. On a random evening when I had not been specifically praying over our situation of wanting a sibling for Lucas, but simply lying in bed at night reading, I came across a Bible verse on the page of my book that I had read and heard preached about many times before. It was a piece quoted out of James 4:2. 

“....You do not have because you do not ask God.”

If you are a Christian and have had a relationship with the Lord for a period of time, you know what I mean when I say that God spoke to my heart very unexpectedly that night. I could “hear” clearly that I never asked Him for a second baby of my own without Lucas’s disabilities, but if I had, He could have provided us that. And He pointed out to me that I had never once prayed over my decision that I would not have any more children. I didn’t ask Him if adoption was what He had planned for us and had decided it for us and my husband went along because it made sense to us both. I was blown away to think I never prayed over that big a decision, but had only made it out of fear that I would have another special needs child if I tried. God just changed my mind, and when I spoke to my husband about it, he agreed that we never had prayed over what we should do and he accepted the message I told him God spoke to me. We both agreed that God knew our need, and always had provided Lucas every other thing he needed in this world.  We believed God had clearly shown that we needed no interventions from medicine, and that if we prayed all the things we hoped for in a sibling for Lucas, God would give us a child of our own, unaffected by Fragile X Syndrome. After about 9 months of effort, calculating cycles and fertility, the whole nine yards, we finally got positive results in the summer of 2016 and were over the moon that God had answered our prayers and given us what He had promised. We were so sure of it, we told everyone about this pregnancy and announced it on social media. For the whole summer I had morning sickness and my stomach started to expand rapidly as it did in my first pregnancy. I am one of the lucky women who shows before 12 weeks is even up. But then, an early ultrasound showed no growth and heartbeat on the monitor. We still believed. We still prayed that God would show His power in this life that we were certain He had given us. The day before my birthday that year, Sept 6, after still having all the symptoms of pregnancy for the subsequent weeks since my last visit, the staff sadly told me nothing had changed. No heartbeat. Blighted ovum is what they called the condition, and the informed me that I should simply wait for miscarriage to occur. It was just a few days later that it did, and it was so much more violent than my first that I had to spend a night in the hospital and wait for the doctor to fix everything the next day so I could go home and take care of my son and help care for my mother who was very ill at that time and we knew, didn’t have long to be with us. I had so wanted her to hold her second grandchild before she left this earth. I thought I must have been wrong about what God told me and thought maybe I would never be able to try to have another baby of our own again. I couldn’t take another heartbreak like that. But God brought me the help I needed through the words of others. I was in an online Bible study about God’s timing not always looking like we think it will and not always being on our preferred timeline. I had also been listening to several different preachers during a revival series at Elevation Church online. One line from Christine Cain, who had been talking about the trauma of her past, reminded me that I didn’t have to make any more decisions based on fear.

“Why would you let one event from your past define your future?” 

That was the end of the month my miscarriage had occured. My husband and I decided to wait two cycles as recommended and try again, but this time, I relinquished everything to God and His will and there was no ovulation tests, looking at the calendar and trying to force the issue. My mom passed away in October and we had to go through our first holiday season without her. I can remember being at church on Christmas Eve and feeling a level of comfort and hope I hadn’t expected. Two days after Christmas, I went to a walk in clinic for a UTI and the doctor told me my pregnancy test was positive. I marveled at how God worked but we did keep this one quiet for three months and made sure there was a clear heartbeat and that my doctor was happy with the growth of my little peanut before telling anyone. 

We gave our whole family Valentines with ultrasound pictures in 2017 and every day we and those closest to us prayed fervently for this child to be what I believed what God said He would be. I prayed over every system and function that people have, that all would be normal and our child would be born strong and healthy. We also prayed for a girl at first, because I had always wanted a daughter, and we knew that in the event of Fragile X recurring, girls typically have less severe presentation because they have a second X chromosome to fall back on. But early blood work revealed genetics to us and we found out it was a boy. It didn’t take long to let go of my visions of beautiful dresses and ruffled bottom pants, and be excited that Lucas was finally going to have a brother. I also had always wanted him to have the opportunity to learn from male peers who cared about him and in a few years as this little one grew, we would have our chance. I kept praying my prayers, and praying scripture over our new son all through pregnancy, And I felt like God confirmed to me multiple times that Liam needed to be his name because of its meaning, strong willed warrior and protector. Just what we always hoped to have for Lucas in the time of our absence on this earth, someone who would love and protect him from harm if he wasn’t fully independent by adulthood and able to care for himself. I felt like God confirmed all of this, and that Liam was in his hands multiple times, to be what he revealed to me so many months earlier when I had just been reading a book. I was overwhelmed by His goodness when the doctor told me my due date was in September. Because I had felt God speaking to me once when I read the passage in Job about How God would restore all that had been lost. He was restoring my loss one year later. I knew with absolute certainty that our son would not carry our first child’s disability. God had changed my heart and mind for the purpose of bringing us the blessing we always hoped for and to show others through our story what belief in Him can do, and that He works all things together for our good. 

We still had a cord blood test done at the birth of our son just to rule out Fragile X and I couldn’t wait for the day when I could publicly praise God as I informed everyone that Liam’s test was negative. That day never came. I will never forget the call that day, when my baby, who had already brought on a round of unanticipated PPD for me, was crying as he so often did, and I recognized the number of our pediatricians office and put him down in his bassinet and went to another room to answer the phone to hear what they had to say. She told me his results had come in and before she said what they were, I knew it, because I could hear it in her voice. Liam had a full mutation of Fragile X Syndrome. Devastation swept over me.  I didn’t say anything to anyone except my husband over the phone while he was at work. And in true fashion, he accepted it and said everything would be fine. I didn’t think so. I didn’t think I could do all over what I had just done for my oldest son the last ten years. I said I couldn’t do it again because I couldn’t.  I just wanted my little piece of normal in this life. I just wanted what God said we would have in this little baby as he grew. Because I couldn’t stop weeping and I didn’t even want to hold my baby that afternoon, I texted my dearest friend and told her alone what was just revealed to me and that I needed her to pray. She is gifted in prayer and I knew I had to snap out of this emotional black hole and move on with life. This friend has also taught me a lot about what she had learned of healing over the years, and how we can often block God’s blessing through a lack of faith. It certainly is repeated in scripture that when we ask for something, we must ask without doubt. We need to believe it’s already done. And she had previously pointed out to me stories in the Bible, like when Jesus sent out all the doubting people before he raised a girl from the dead, and how we learn that He could not do many miracles in his own town because of a lack of faith, so he moved on. On this day, she told me not to tell other people about the results. We didn’t want a negative view of the matter projected onto Liam, and she did say to me that we could still pray all the same prayers that we did during pregnancy and that God could still do it, And I knew she was right. And by the next evening, I had decided that God was just going to show off with Liam, but I needed someone with experience in counseling to help me sort out my human emotions. One thing I never wanted was for the way things happened to cause anyone else to lack faith in the goodness of God. A few days later, another friend came over to help me with the baby so I could catch up on laundry and things. I told her about the test results, not knowing why, and asking her to keep it between us, but that for some reason I felt like I had to tell her. The first thing she said was exactly what my other friend had said, we could still pray the same prayers we did before and God could still do it. I still think that came from Him through my two different friends who don’t know each other. He used them to speak truth to me. Then she asked me if I had gotten to talk about it with a counselor and I told her I didn’t know where to go. I didn’t want everyone to know, so I had not wanted to go to our own church and I wasn’t sure who else with a Christian perspective I could talk to about this. I had wanted it to be someone who wasn’t close to our family, who didn’t have any personal stake in our outcome because of their personal love for us. She told me she knew her pastor would speak to me. She helped me set an appointment with him and I sat in the office of this very kind stranger and tearfully spoke my whole story to him. He listened and said a lot of helpful things but one thing that stuck with me ever since that day that helped me so much. He gently let me know that I didn’t hear God wrong, because that had been my first reaction. I felt like this whole thing either made me look crazy or God look like He wasn’t good. He reminded me of the storm that rose up in the sea after Jesus had invited his disciples to board the boat with him and go over to the other side. He spoke about how scared they were and that they got angry that Jesus was resting because they thought he didn’t care about them. They reacted this way because they forgot who they were with and that he invited them to go over to the other side. He said God’s invitation to me was to have another baby, and even though the trip didn’t look like I thought it would so far, I could still know, like the disciples should have known, that we would make it to our other side, because Jesus was in my boat and He told me to get on board.

My attitude was different from that day forward, and I did continue to pray over Liam and declare positive things over him as I was advised by my close friends who were among the only few that knew about our test results. And I did see that Liam had normal development as an infant, when my older son had not. Liam remained right on track with his gross motor and fine motor development well beyond his first birthday. I was blown away that Liam would imitate things I did at only 5 months of age. He had babble and later words that he should have had approaching his first birthday and beyond. We had gotten early intervention lined up when he got that diagnosis in case we needed it but up until past his first birthday he stayed within normal ranges of development. Unlike my eldest, he had met all the big milestones when he was expected to and walked just a few days after his first birthday. But then, he began having chronic ear infections and was on several rounds of antibiotics. He seemed to spend most of his second year around the sun being ill. We got him ear tubes placed in November of 2017, and though they say follow up after surgery to make sure all is well should take place within 4 to 8 weeks, Liam’s appointment wasn’t scheduled until the very last week, two months later. At that visit, they found that on one side the tube was completely blocked over with dried blood, which explained why he seemed not to be hearing as well and was falling more regularly. They said try more drops in the ear to see if it would clear it out. We were back 6 weeks later to find out that it didn’t and he had been on yet another round of antibiotics while we were waiting due to another infection. They scheduled him surgery to replace the tubes but due to bronchitis and another illness in between, his date was moved twice. He didn’t get his new tubes until April 2018, 5 months later. So it was towards the beginning of all this that the speech he had started to disappear and soon after his diverse babbling sounds went too, His pediatricians assured me this was probably due to the hearing issues from his blocked tube more so than Fragile X. But I did ask for a speech therapist to head this off. He wasn’t allowed to get one according to the rules of the county until 19 months of age. But they did send him a special instructor who could work on sounds with him until speech could come. Never did have much luck in the department of getting sounds out of him on command, Then, he had attention deficit problems emerge, and he wasn’t doing some of the things peers his age were doing fine motor wise, like scribbling with crayons and stacking blocks. I didn’t know if it might only be because he didn’t want to, not that he couldn’t, but I asked them to send an OT anyway. The good news was that when she did her sensory profile on him, he scored close to normal, having some minor sensory seeking tendencies. But it happens he was shortly on another round of antibiotic and I eventually lost track of how many rounds he had in his young life but I know it was at least 18 rounds. Shockingly, about two weeks after scoring so well, he suddenly had an outburst of sensory seeking behavior that was horrible and it has never stopped. Truth be told, my life has felt rather nightmarish since then, because all the things I prayed against and believed were never going to happen WERE happening and they have only expanded over the months, especially since there was a time of quarantine and he easily started copying a lot of his brother’s noisy behavior. I truly never once asked “why?” when I had Lucas. This time, because it was supposed to be different, I am having a lot more trouble understanding what has happened so far. I feel like this is so far off from what God showed me and my close friends who knew this from the beginning have tried to encourage me to keep believing the supernatural vision I got even though it currently looks as it does in the natural world. But I just can’t seem to stop asking, why? I keep demanding to know why. Why did I have all that hope and evidence that things were going to be just fine for Liam if they were not? Why can I only pass on my bad gene? Why only broken chromosomes?  Why didn’t God just leave me be, when I never wanted to do this in the first place? Why didn’t Liam’s outcome appear in the way I thought? Why do I have to sit here day after day with him screaming all the time instead of speaking, and getting kicked in the face every time I go to sit down on my sofa because that’s one of his ways of trying to get himself some sensory impact? Do you know that most kids with Fragile X Syndrome talk? My first son took 7 and a half years to speak a word and now his communication is still one or two words at a time. Now I have a 3 year old who won’t talk to me? Again, I have to witness children approaching him to play, and again my child only squeals at them, because he is delighted, but doesn’t know how to speak. I can’t even tell you how many times I have yelled at God out loud.  Really, God, really?? I can’t stand to read people’s media updates about the cute things their kids say. I feel slighted and think how wonderful that all must be and why couldn’t God let me see that in my own family? I cry over events that everyone else had fun at but for us, they turn out badly or we just stay home because I know better than to attempt certain things with my two boys. I was on a playdate where my child was the only one who would not sit and listen at story time. And then  my friend’s two little children both sang “The Wheels on the Bus” to me and I had to choke back tears. When will I ever hear my little one talk or sing? I am really seeing all this happen for the second time, now when I am SO much older and trying to beat the chronic stress? I am really witnessing another child of mine operating at a major skill deficit? When I clearly heard that it was NOT going to be this way? I have a feeling it was the excess of antibiotics that ruined things for Liam and now I haven’t been able to repair it but God can do it. Yet, this is what I see day to day. And all I want to know is WHY? Depression and defeat want to consume me. It’s like my life circumstances have imprisoned me and now someone just keeps stacking more cinder blocks higher and higher around me to lock me in from ever experiencing the abundant life Christ came to give all who believe in His name. The words of a song by Need to Breathe often come to me reminding me not to lose hope when, for the first time ever,  I have questioned God’s goodness to ME. Not whether he is ultimately good but where was His goodness towards me and my children in this situation? 

“In this wasteland where I’m living, there is a crack in the door filled with light, and it’s all that I need to survive. In this wasteland where I’m living, there is a crack in the door filled with light. And it’s all that I need to shine.” 

I have moments where I think this defeat, depression and anger, really will eat me alive. But those things are not from God. I don’t know if I will ever know why these things happened but I know that it’s a possibility it wasn’t God at all. The things trying to consume me come from Satan, just like all other bad things in the world. I continue to fill my mind with TRUTH so that I can have hope. All these facts of my life, I feel like I have a need to come out with them, as I am now, in writing down these words, without certainty of who will read them. But these facts of my life, the test results, the sudden emergence of symptoms and loss of skills and not being able to find enough help because of the current state of our nation, those things are still just pieces of information but they are not the truth. I still have hope because Jesus is the Truth. And Jesus is still in me, and the Word says greater is He who is in me than he who is in the world. And it’s still true that He invited me to have this child of my own I never planned to have. Pastor Steven Furtick once said that if God doesn’t show up when you want Him, it’s because He’s going to show off when He comes. Ask Lazarus, he said. When I can’t see God’s hand in this, I know it’s still there and that He is for us, He is for me. This situation has shaken my faith more than anything ever has, but at my core of my being, I know God is for me. A few other things that have helped me try to sort out all the garbage in my mind about what I am facing came from other positive content that I make it a point to listen to regularly. One podcast featured a quote about how all emotional pain is self created by refusing to accept our reality. I feel like by trying to keep the diagnosis of my second child a secret so that people would not see him in a negative view or doubt God, I have been rejecting reality. I know that people who have spent any amount of time with Liam know that something is going on. How long can I keep acting like everything is fine? The speaker went on to say that no matter what happens to us, we should not spend time wishing for something different. Well since I went into this expecting something different, that has been hard for me. But the final point is what resonates with me. He said we need to fully accept our reality while still having unwavering faith that things can get better. These words on paper are me, fully accepting my reality, and reclaiming my unwavering faith. It has been shaken by the way things are, but it has not been destroyed. I still believe that things can and WILL get better for my boys, both my boys and me. I have faith that it will not always be this way. Even after experiencing some disappointment with where I wanted my first child to be at 14, and even after being made fearful after the same label was placed on my second child, and even though it’s not looking like what I thought it would look like, it will be better. It will be good. Because whatever comes from God is good, and whatever comes from the enemy who lives in this world will be defeated, And when I look through the pages of the Bible I know that God’s promises were always kept, even though sometimes it took years to come to pass. Sometimes people had to wait. There was a pastor by the name of Dharius Daniels whom I heard speaking about this over the summer. He shared the story that God told Moses he was going to use him to take his people out of bondage in Egypt and into the promised land. Those were the only two destinations mentioned and he did not tell Moses how he would get them there. He didn’t take them there on the shortest route. He knew also that their own choices would cause them to be delayed for 40 years before they reached the promise, but he left all that out when He spoke of His promise. I think there are times we just have to be ok with not having all the details. God gave me a promise. Liam is a strong willed warrior and protector who will not carry the diagnosis in the same way. Long ago, He also spoke to my heart about Lucas and told me that although I wasn’t receiving an overnight miracle, Lucas would do well in His life. What I see is information, but Jesus is the Truth. Scripture says God is not a man that He should lie, and even without seeing the big picture, I believe Him. I accept the reality, as much as I didn’t want to. I have unwavering faith that it will get better and I will witness change in the lives of my sons. I believe the walls that seem to surround us and close in will be broken down, and that any time it’s not good, it’s not finished. I may be living out parts of a story I wish had been different, but it’s only part.  The Truth still stands. 

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Coffee, Tea Bags and Muscles

"You handle puke like a champ," she said to me with a laugh. A compliment of sorts you could say, that I never would have imagined myself receiving.
The words came from my son's new nursing aid, working her fist case with my special needs boy. She is a young mother with a young child who hasn't thrown up much in his life.
My son on the other hand, is 13 years old, has his certain needs along with reflux and a bad gag reflex. He has been throwing up frequently since the day he was born. And I didn't know why this comment from her was so thought provoking for me at first, but I did reflect on how at one time in my life, seeing vomit just turned my stomach and I would run off in the opposite direction, glad it wasn't my responsibility to clean it up. But when you're mom, it becomes your responsibility. A few days later I shared a blog post from someone else about how God doesn't choose strong people to be special needs parents, as well meaning people like to say. Actually, the writer stated, we get strong because we are special needs parents. We build strength because we are forced to. And I thought of how that vomit dealing skill my aid marveled at that night, after I had been dealing with it every day for two weeks, due to the flu coming to our house and turning into residual congestion that wouldn't let go, was kind of like a muscle as they say. You build a muscle to be stronger by working it, and something that used to cause me fear or discomfort has become so commonplace in my life. I had no choice but to face it. I had to work the muscle whether I wanted to or not. And now? Well refer to the first line. It's no thing anymore.
Then this conversation in passing where I just replied that you simply get used to it after a while, it got me thinking about other analogies people have made and how it applies to my life as a mom to a boy whose childhood has been different than most.
Eleanor Roosevelt said "A woman is like a tea bag. You never know how strong she is until she gets in hot water."
Again, there isn't much choice, is there? You build the strength or you die, basically. Or if not, you live in despair over what isn't the way you wish it was, and you let circumstances rob you of all joy.
Then there is that story about boiling water, and I do not know who to attribute it to, but I do remember it going around in several email forwards years ago. It's the story of the mom telling her daughter to observe how when you put an egg in hot water, it becomes hard, when you put carrots in hot water, they become soft, but when you put coffee in hot water, it changes the water. And of course we are supposed to be the ones who want to change the environment and make it better. I want to be the one who is placed into a tough situation and changes the situation because I have allowed myself to be changed inwardly in positive ways. Which leads me to someone else I know who has the ability to change water into something else. And He can also walk on it. And He can command it to be still when it rages in the sea. Jesus changes the condition of the water, and everything else. He is in me, and that is why I never truly broke while I had to keep building the muscles I didn't think I had. And He is the reason I know the atmosphere will keep changing for us, as the progress we have made slowly will just keep growing and growing until my child is well and doing all he needs to do for himself. I have always said there are things about autism and Fragile X I would take away in a heartbeat, but at the same time, I am grateful for the experience and how it has made me stronger, better and able to take on anything else because the One who changes the water has changed me.

I Should Be Writing Something

From a young age I loved reading and the opportunity to string words together myself onto a piece of paper. While I thought of it as fun, I never thought of it as a calling on my life. I grew up knowing who Jesus was very well, raised in church and spending regular time in Sunday school. But as I have written in a previous blog post, I experienced a lot of unkindness growing up in school. A lot of cruel words and actions were directed at me, and by the time I started changing into a young lady, my self worth was in the negative and I was depressed to the point of regularly contemplating my own death. My parents knew a guy from my dad's work who was a pastor and a professional counselor. They took me to see him and my life was saved because He got me to understand from my heart the depth of God's love for me, and that my value did not depend on what others thought. When I went to a vacation Bible school that summer, I realized I couldn't remember a time in my life that I prayed to say that I accepted Jesus as my personal savior, and I went forward at the alter and did just that. From that time forward, all I knew was that I wanted to help other people the way I was helped through the knowledge of God and how great is His love for us. I dreamed of mission trips around the world to proclaim the Gospel among the nations. I dreamed of getting myself a college degree that would allow me to change a life the way my counselor changed mine. I always had empathy for others. Surely God would use my compassion to save someone else. I enrolled into my first basic psychology class without a shadow of a doubt what my degree would be in that first semester of college. And I hated it. HATED. I hated it and the mumbo jumbo I thought my professor was teaching so badly that I dropped the class, and picked up something general instead until I could decide what on earth I was going to do with myself now. Now what would I do to change the world?

I recall very clearly one dearly loved professor that taught me during my first two years of college. He taught English and writing classes, and the classes brought back to me the joy I had experienced all through my education every time I had a chance to write anything, whether it was a book report, a poem, a biography or a short story. I got easy As on those assignments, and this professor encouraged me every time he handed me back a graded paper, telling me that it was so good and how he had enjoyed reading it. I thought back to other people I had admired over the years telling me they thought I was skilled in my writing. And it finally struck me that writing was possibly what I was meant to do. I changed my major to journalism, because at that time I believed the media had the ability to bring about positive change in the world and serve as a protection of sorts for our society. I could change the world a little bit at a time through the written word. I wanted to move to some suburb of some city and write feature stories about things that mattered for a magazine. But life rarely ever goes the way we envision it will. Just as with the original dreams of world travel and psychology degrees, I learned that God had planted different purposes within me, and that He would use the circumstances of my life to encourage people in different ways than I ever could have thought up. The man I wanted to marry and I decided that it was best to stay close to our family, who all lived right here in small town, USA. So instead of a widely circulated magazine, my job was at a local newspaper. While I hated the "hard news" stuff, because my heart hurt where someone was killed in an accident or their home had caught fire, I did love writing features about the treasures found in local communities and positive things people had done. I loved bringing light to needs that got charities and missionaries to receive checks in the mail. I felt like sometimes, having that bi-line in the paper with my strung together words was making a difference.

But when my husband and I finally had our first child, we discovered in his first year of life that parenthood wasn't going to look the way we thought it would either. We were still trying to nail down his diagnosis when I knew I had to leave my job and be his mom, therapist and teacher full time.

 Little did we know when we decided to stay here that Lucas would come along with the needs he had and every service he could possibly need would be right here in this county. We have been surprisingly well provided for when it comes to his therapy and education. I think God knew we were planted where we needed to be. But as the days were filled with all his necessary activities, my writing about much of anything came to a stop. I did get to attend local autism events and write about them on a freelance basis for a while, but then all my acquaintances at that local paper moved on to other things, autism conferences at a local college were no longer offered, and I had nothing I could write about for publication any more. When my son started kindergarten, I tried starting a blog. I wrote on it pretty regularly and then gave it up when it didn't get much of a following. I didn't see the value in putting the effort in for so few people to read it. Fast forward a few more years to dealing with my mother's illness and having a second baby, and having a minute to write more than a social media post was pretty much impossible.

Before that though, I had seen the joy of having my name in a book, and even on the cover of another. Someone I know was asking for submissions for an a book that shared stories of living with depression and perhaps overcoming it. I was so happy to share my story of how all those years ago, God rescued me, and how over the years, whenever depression came back for me, He was my way out. He always helped me have what I needed to beat it.
After that, a dear friend of mine was writing a book about the state of the church in America and asked me to help him. I was super excited and also terrified when he told me to run with a little of it largely on my own. Because there is always that inner chatter about not being good enough. But I did finish. The book was edited and published and distributed, and I have to say, receiving any royalties, small as they may have been in the scope of books published, was very cool.

This friend of mine, who knows me better than most people as he has been my spiritual mentor and like another dad to me, he often has a question for me on the occasions we got together in person.
Have you done any writing lately? And with the complete understanding that he thought I should be using my gift, I usually sheepishly said no.
When I listen to anything for personal development and hear people talking about the importance of creativity and asking me to consider the purpose I may have by thinking of what I want to create, I always feel convicted that what I want to create most is inspiration for others through written words. So again, I blog a little. For a really small crowd most of the time, anywhere from 20 to 800 max views on my posts. But I read something by a girl named Rachel Hollis recently and she said how writing was her must do also, and she said that she learned that she needed to write for herself, not for others. Write for yourself! Another podcaster and author I listen to, Emily Freeman, said the exact same thing on an episode of The Next Right Thing. She added to the sentiment that we who write or create anything need to do it for an audience of One. God. Wow, I felt the moving of the Holy Spirit trying to communicate to me that He gave me a gift and I have declined to find the time or the motivation to use it. I have had it in my heart that I need to write a book about health and all that I have learned in recent years on how to best care for our health. Some of the things I have learned were so shocking to me, and I know that the majority of people are unaware that they have the power to prevent or reverse so many of the commonly suffered with conditions that occur at such high levels in our country. But the negative inner chatter rises up every time I consider the possibility of writing my own book. I don't know how to publish it....nobody will want to....I am a nobody so nobody will pick up a book written by me....nobody cares what I have to say.....on and on and on. But for the first time ever I feel confident in telling that inner voice to shut up. I have heard the message God wanted me to receive, and I am 100 percent sure that if I have reversed an autoimmune disease through life style change alone, if it's true that maybe my mom did not have to develop dementia or even ALS, and if other people I love didn't have to stop doing all the things they once enjoyed in life because of failing health, it would be wrong for me not to tell people that. I was given a gift by God, I got the education to know how to use it, I have learned how to interview the experts on a topic and I used to do it for a living. Just because life turned out differently than expected and I am busy being a mom is no excuse not to use what I have and share my message. So this is me, promising to myself and whomever decides to skim through this, that I will spend a few minutes of every morning writing something. Because now I really see it clearly, I should be writing something.

What Would Jesus Eat? How the Answer Changed My Life

Imagine being in the places we read about in the pages of our Bible, with Jesus by your side. Day to day, did the disciples ever obsess over what they were eating, how many carbs it contained or if it had too much fat? I don't get the impression that they did. I think there were times they worried about not having enough food, since Jesus had the conversation with them in the book of Matthew about not worrying about what they would eat or wear, but to seek first God's kingdom and God would provide all those things they needed as well. Then of course there were the times they and all the people with them were hungry and Jesus multiplied what little food was present to make it more than enough for everyone. But those worries aside, I have learned that what Jesus and His followers ate was real food, locally grown, farmed or caught.

A quick Google search brought me to an article on the Dr. Oz website that talked about a book called A Year of Living Biblically, which is definitely on my want to read list. Author Al Jacobs and Dr. Don Colbert studied the Bible for nutritional clues about Jesus's diet. They said in His region of the world, lentils, whole grains, fruits, vegetables, dates, nuts and fish were readily available and quite popular. Many people ate their food raw, and with no refrigerators it was harder to eat massive amounts of meat at every meal, as we commonly do in America today. We know if we read the Bible Jesus did eat some meat, which proves to me it is morally right, however I do think God might be unhappy with the current abusive practices of factory farming. That is a post for another day, but this is why I am trying to buy more of the meats we do consume in our house from local farms who raise their animals in a humane way, the way they were raised in the early years of our planet when people in the Bible had livestock.
My point of writing today is this...eating like Jesus ate will restore health to our bodies. I am living proof. It is simple to do, although not easy, as we are bombarded with edible substances all around us that our bodies were never designed to consume. No wonder we have a spike in diseases of all kinds that are cutting our lives short or decreasing the quality of life we enjoy. But I am fully convinced that the answer to losing weight does not lie in fad diets, low carb diets or meal replacements. The answer is to eat what God made. When I drastically decreased processed foods, and seriously increased the number of vegetables I ate, the weight I could never lose finally started to come off. And even more importantly, I was cured of an autoimmune disease.

One of my heroes in the health industry is Dr. Mark Hymen. Listening to his podcast, The Doctor's Farmacy was the first thing that made me believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that I could heal from my autoimmune disease buy fixing my nutrition, and therefore fixing my gut health. The information he gave me was absolutely correct! It worked! Functional medicine is an amazing thing and I look forward to the day that it becomes more accessible in our country.
When I read the book The Daniel Plan last year, I loved it so much that I purchased the Bible study materials and videos so that I could share them with my challengers. Dr. Hymen happens to be one of the medical experts interviewed in the book and on the video series. The simplicity of something he said struck me as the real key to health. "If God made it, eat it. If a factory made it, don't." That quote has come back to my mind this year as the answer to reclaiming my health, and it is what I tried to follow most of the time that gave me success after struggling for well over a year. If God created the food, it is good to eat. Even if it has natural sugars. All those foods found in nature were designed to provide our bodies with what they need to thrive. The Daniel Plan book has scientific evidence to back up the Biblical belief that this is the best way to go. Throughout the journey of the book, we learn about everything that is needed to help us achieve and maintain good health. It has five essential categories of faith, food, fitness, focus and friends. I am so happy to be in a partnership with my coach, Andrea, as we agree that we have the same heart for teaching people about health as a result of faith in Jesus Christ. We both know that the only way to achieve lasting freedom and peace in every area is through a relationship with Him. As I have just shown, the answer to everything you need to know can be found in the pages of the Bible, including the healthiest diet. I would be so happy to have you dive into this amazing Bible study with us, starting at the end of this month in an online group. Consider this your invitation to join! Ask me for details and let's dive in to our best lives together.

A Tale of Two Apples

Death and life are in the power of the tongue....Proverbs 18:21


Whoever guards his mouth and tongue keeps his soul from troubles. Proverbs 21:23


We hear these messages and more like these in the Bible but do we really take them to heart? Or do we even believe they are truth? Do words really matter THAT much? I have often said my mouth gets me in trouble, but growing up, I actually prided myself in having the last word, whether is was a good word or not. I had to be able to be right. Now I know, as an adult, that I have done years of damage by speaking the wrong words and thinking the wrong thoughts.

For as a man thinks in his heart, so is he... Proverbs 23:7

Let me take this a step further and have us consider whether or not our words said over time have become the truth about our lives. What we fear, what we SAY we fear, and ruminate on or worry about....have those things ever come to pass in your life, after keeping your mind parked on that place? I won't go into details about what issues this has been the case for me, but I will just say that it has happened to me. And I have become what some of my limiting beliefs about myself said I was too. I thank God for showing me clearly that the power to change things lies with me. If you don't believe that our words have power to bring about good or bad, I am about to show you shocking visual proof.
Take a look at these two random apples, both taken from the same bag bought at the store, having been in our house for the same amount of time, and I will tell you a story about these two apples.

They look the same in this picture, do they not? Well it happened that a dear friend of mine and I had been talking about the power of our words and the importance of speaking life and love over every situation, instead of negativity and complaint. She told me over lunch once that a friend of hers had written words on two pieces of fruit. On one, life and love, and words like that. On the other, words like hate and death and curse words that are commonly said in our culture. And she put them away. My friend relayed to me that one piece of fruit, the one with the life giving words on it, stayed in perfect condition. The other, with the words of death on it, rotted through! What? Seems unbelievable but I DID believe her. I agreed that words have more power than we know. Then not long after that, this friend made a social media post about two jars of cooked rice in which the same thing was done. The jar of rice weeks later that had beautiful words written on it still looked like rice. The jar with the hateful words on it rotted to the point of being brown liquid! Both had the same amount of rice and the jars had been tightly sealed. I decided to try this for myself. Some people I know told me they did not believe anything would happen. I honestly was unsure of what was going to take place but I tried it. On one apple, I wrote words of love and life. 

The Work

As I take a look at everyone's children in their perfectly posed first and last day of school pictures, that show only their physical growth, I know that each child has grown in so many ways that can't be seen with the eyes. Each child has learned new things in their own way and hopefully grown in spirit, becoming one year closer to the person God sees them becoming as an adult. My own child's schedule works differently than most, and he will attend summer school. His growth appears way differently than most children too. Lately I have had to remind myself to look for it, and not let it be lost in what has not yet come to be. As I try to snap pictures of my own moving 12 year old, who does not pose for photos, as he gets off the bus on the last day before his week long break, I think it's time to share the part of his story that came to light for me recently. It's a piece that nobody knows about and some of it I will not be proud to tell, but in the end, it's a signal of hope for the future. And if I can inspire another parent like me to know that it is never too late and we should never give up no matter how many times we have to start over, then the story needs shared. I say this knowing that not many will click on this little blog and read it. But I have been prompted by the Holy Spirit to share my thoughts when I can, and the ones that He gives to me, because there has to be one other person who needs them. It makes it worth the effort.
(Note: even if you don't believe in God, if you are a special needs parent I hope you keep reading what I learned. I just can't leave God out of our story because He has been the biggest part of it.)
Speaking of the Holy Spirit, I remember hearing from Him clearly when Lucas was a baby.

It was months after my joy had been so complete in finally becoming a mom. It was what I had wanted to be most. And it took a while. I had a heartbreaking loss of a pregnancy first. So when my baby boy was born healthy, I experienced the happiest day of my life. Albeit the most painful. Until the day when I realized my baby was not a typically developing baby. When there was no denying that he wasn't going to be doing things in life the way I envisioned when I first held him or even felt him moving in me and didn't know if he was a boy or girl. You know, I just thought he would be like most kids. And it hurt to see that he wasn't. So as we started the long diagnostic process we took him forward in the little church we attended then during a healing service, where people were invited to come forward, have the pastor and others in the church lay their hands on you and pray for healing, as the Bible tells us to do. I wanted a miracle for my son. I wanted the kind of miracle where Jesus spoke and things instantly happened. He spoke and gave sight and made lame people walk and freed them from demon possession and even raised them from the dead. Right away. And I know that those miracles still happen today when we pray in His name. But God spoke to my heart that day, even as we were in the middle of our prayer for Lucas, and He told me that was not the type of miracle I was going to get. Although I have had my days when I still struggle to see it, the miracle God promised we WOULD receive was better. He said to me that day in front of the alter that Lucas would do well in his life and succeed, but it wasn't going to happen instantly like I asked. God said I would have to put in the work, because it was in the work that God would be glorified. I felt peace about it in that moment and I accepted God's answer. And from that day forward Lucas got everything he ever needed to help him do his best. We have certainly seen small miracles happen every day.

But here comes the part I hate to admit. The last two years have been different. And I have come to realize that my attitude had changed and I had stopped believing for the best. It started as my son approached his tenth birthday. I became depressed as we entered the double digits years, because I didn't think that after 10 years of doing the work that my child would still have so much more work to get through in order to become even semi independent. I didn't think there would still be so many dirty pull ups at this age, or messes that you would expect out of a 2 year old, but not a 10 year old. I didn't think he would still have so little to say. I didn't think he would still be lashing out physically after so many years of therapy. And I went to the dark place of wondering what good it all had done if this is still where we were. Also, my mother was getting more unwell by the day. Her body and brain failed her and I had to help out a lot and spend days with her so my dad could have respite. We did the best we could for her but it was horribly sad to watch what took place with her. So I was just trying to survive the days at the time. Also, I had experienced extreme emotions over not having a second child in our family. We never wanted Lucas to be alone. We always thought he would get a sibling through adoption, and then God revealed a different plan, one that had involved having another baby of our own, despite the fear of Fragile X, the disorder Lucas had that had affected him so profoundly and caused him to have autism, among several other issues. Well in following that call for a second baby when my son was already 10 years old, I had another miscarriage, this one worse than the first, because I had been pregnant for a whole trimester and the event landed me in the hospital over night. After the procedure to stop the extreme bleeding, I was released late the next day while my son was still in school. I wanted nothing more than to hide from the world. Consumed by the pain of what happened, I returned home to my dad asking me immediately to sit with my mom the next morning. The mom who I would have loved to cry with but who had no idea about what was happening. I had to keep pressing. I had no choice. So I left my son's progress for the moment in the hands of his therapists and teachers. Because being his therapist while caring for an ill parent and trying to process my hurt was more than I could do. Two weeks after my Lucas's 10th birthday, my mom, his Grammy, passed away. And as with any major change, he had a hard time with that. But his very limited verbalization left us unable to tell how much he understood or exactly what he felt. This is everything that happened in October of 2016. Two days after Christmas, I found out I was pregnant again and we announced it months later when everything with this pregnancy was deemed normal by my medical team.

As we shared it at the time, our superhero was finally getting his sidekick. We were over the moon and of course delighted when little brother Liam was born, during a much less traumatic birth, thanks to the epidural I had this time. 

As I write this today, Liam is 21 months old. He adores his older brother just as we hoped. We know he is going to be his friend for life. What a blessing he has been to our family! But also, what a life changer. Wow, I didn't know just how difficult it was going to be for me to care for both these people every day. We went from nursing around the clock to complete mobility and shenanigans so quickly. Both things kept me very busy with the new addition to our family. And as I mentioned, when life is changing, Lucas's behavior changes too. And Lucas continued to need all that he needs. Not to mention that he is in that preteen and prepubescent stage. When you see the major life events that have occurred over the last two years in writing, it seems no wonder why we would be in a place that we feel like he has been stuck concerning his improved development. But that hasn't made it any less emotional. God has still revealed to me that in my moments of crying out to Him through hot tears of anger, saying things about how He promised that Lucas would be okay and what we see now is NOT okay, I had simply gotten my vision and perspective distorted. 

In these years that seemed stagnant for positive change in his abilities, God showed me that I was speaking way too much negativity over our situations. I spoke badly about what was going on and to and about my son. I yelled at him for bad behavior instead of remembering that he doesn't have it in him to do things just for the purpose of being mean or spiteful. He is only ever trying to defend himself against what bothers him or what he doesn't want to be forced to do. And if you don't think the way we speak about our lives matters, check out my upcoming post, one about the tale of two apples. You will get the visual on how much words make an impact. But there was a little more revelation that came to me recently, about why I had the "I give up" attitude just because my son has so much more to learn, and because we lost his home therapy, and because his medical and teaching staff seemed to be all out of new ideas on how to move him forward. 

"Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life." Proverbs 13:12

When I read this verse I was hit with the reality that my hope for Lucas had been deferred time and time again. And it only seemed to get worse when we lost so much of our help and those who were still on board could not seem to help us. God showed me more. When I had gotten sick over the last year, another major life event, and I felt helpless because nobody was giving me any good advice, God revealed to me that I only needed him and the brain he gave me to do the research I needed for myself. I was my own help. And in this season, I could be my son's help too. As hard as it feels, if I abide in Jesus, I have all I need to find out what will help Lucas and carry it out. He showed me that in our state of survival mode through family illness and sleepless weeks with a new born and treading water with my kids to keep from drowning, I had abandoned the actual work for Lucas before the work was finished. Remember that is the part God said I must do in order for the promise of my son's full potential to be brought to completion. God is glorified in the work that He does in us and through us and we can't grow tired of doing good, as scripture says. Our reward is yet to be reaped. Hope may have been deferred but in Christ there is always still hope. Our tree of life is coming. The past and the present do not determine my son's future. I have seemed to stumble upon new information about how we can get him some more momentum accidentally, but I know there are no coincidences in the order of things. I have a feeling that some day, on his actual last day of school, when he will have grown into a man, I will have a photo of a guy who has achieved more than we even dreamed possible. God is cool like that. I am looking forward to our longing fulfilled. But first, the work. 

From Darkness to Light

This is the story of a girl I know well. She was born a people person who would prefer to be in the company of others most of the time. As a toddler she pitter pattered about on her chunky little legs, constantly chasing after her big brother and seeking his attention.

 As a preschooler, she often felt lonely playing by herself, even if she didn’t know the meaning of that word or how to describe the feeling. She would always ask if her friends could come over and play, and felt dejected any time the answer was no. Likewise if mom or dad or big brother were busy and wouldn’t want to read, or toss a ball or play with dolls at the moment. She was pretty excited to go to kindergarten and make new friends. She went in fully equipped with the simple script her parents had given her when she nervously asked how she would make friends with anyone new, since the friends she already had were not going to be in her class. All she had to do was say “Hi, I’m Jenny. What’s your name?” Easy enough when your 5, right?

And Jenny DID make some friends, but that year was also the first time she had encountered serious unkindness directed towards her as well. Words of other kids that were meant to hurt and cut down and reject. That pattern continued in elementary school, making it hard for a born people person, because she felt like she didn’t fit in with her peers. She was unaccepted. When middle school came, she wished for a fresh start, because it would be a new building and lots of new people she had not met before. But some of the names that had been assigned to her in grade school followed to the next place, and she was given some new labels as well. None of them were true, but in the middle school world, what does that matter? One thing was certain, the feeling of isolation had taken a toll. The girl felt like nobody accepted her, nobody loved her, nobody cared if she lived or died. So maybe, she would just die. Life felt too hard and she didn’t have anything to offer anyone anyway, she had come to believe.  She wasn’t wanted. Except she was very much loved and cherished by her mother, and her parents found a counselor who could get the reality of God’s love for her to reach the depths of her heart. So it was that her fresh start came not by the acceptance of other people, but from Jesus. She learned to understand that she was created by God, who makes no mistakes, on purpose and for a purpose. 

It was from that day forward she grew in her relationship with Christ and cared more about what he thought than what others thought. A month later, she was baptized just before 14 years of age and thought she had buried all her past hurt from other people under the water and had come out on the surface completely new. She did grow in more confidence in who she was and became unafraid to stand up for herself in high school and college. After she had blossomed into a young woman and grew her hair out and learned how to fix her kinky curls, nobody ever called her ugly anymore, and in fact, she began hearing that she was beautiful. Although she never wanted to please people more than God, it helps to grow confidence when you hear nice words over negative. ( That is something to keep in mind when you talk to the people in your life.) So she firmly believed the past was in the past. But she didn’t know that she still had a little backpack of emotional baggage that she would carry with her into adulthood and into marriage, and parenting and everything else. As an adult, who had been a mom for 12 years and married for nearly 17, she began to learn some things about herself through others. Personal counselors and friends and personal development books helped her understand that there was still anger and bitterness in her heart that came out any time she felt isolated, unheard or uncared for. A favorite author by the name of Lysa Terkeurst had written these words that brought further revelation. “If the enemy can isolate you, he can influence you.” Our enemy, the devil, goes around looking for ways to attack and deceive us. He wants us to believe the worst about God and ourselves and others. He wants us to forget that it’s HIM we are fighting against and make us fight against one another instead. And a feeling of isolation is one this girl has known for most of life. When she was that little girl wanting to just have lots of friends but was met with cruelty instead, she felt isolated. When her closest friendship unexpectedly ended, and she could never quite get that kind of relationship again with another friend, she felt isolated. When other friends that she had for years suddenly seemed too busy for her, or disinterested in getting together with her, she felt isolated. When her son was born she had intended to keep working part time and have “the best of both worlds.” But her son had developmental delays that could be detected early on and she had to quit working and stay home full time in order to help him, and she felt isolated. She wanted to be home with him but she also wanted to be in an office, talking to other adults some days, and using her gift for the written word. The more her son’s special needs emerged and she tried to have him at all the gatherings with family and friends but ended up off in the distance with her child who was not interested in playing where the other kids were, she felt isolated. And when her friends couldn’t understand the challenges she experienced with that child, or when others started to not include HIM because of his differences, she felt more isolated than ever before. Fast forward a few more years to becoming a mother for the second time in a season of life where her mother had already passed away, her husband worked late hours, and it became harder than ever to get out of the house, because now there would need to be a sitter who didn’t mind watching a special needs boy and a baby. It was a baby who was very attached to his mother and might not want to go to bed without her at that. Small group Bible studies that once brought connection to others came to an end. Date nights were no longer a possibility and getting out for friends’ special occasions on weekends was nearly impossible. More isolation. More loneliness. There was even a long stretch where when she really tried to make the personal connections she longed for that something would block every attempt to follow through. Her husband would agree to watch the kids so she could have a mom’s night out and then she got sick. Just repeat that scenario with the illness moving around the house from person to person, for about 9 months time. Very little church, socialization or otherwise could take place. And one day, during a morning workout that was accompanied by a sermon, this girl who tried her best to take care of herself and fill in the gaps with Jesus heard just a few words that culminated into the revelation that led to this story being typed out and shared. Pastor Steven Furtick spoke about how the devil only comes up against people who are a threat to him, in a message called “You must be Important.” The basic principle of the message was that you can know how important you are to God by the size of your storms in life, because those are often the attacks of the enemy coming against you to keep you from your purpose. And then he said this: “What does the enemy attack? What you value most.” In case the name and the details of my life didn’t give the story away, I have been writing my story. And on this morning, when these words were spoken, I set down the weights and the end of my set and felt the weight of the whole world fall off my shoulders at the same time, even as I was hit hard by this realization. What I value most are relationships, and the devil has been attacking me in that area for all of my life, and I had no idea. I never realized that from the time I was that tiny toddler, he was using my longing for relationship with others against me.  But now I know. And now I see how he used my value on relationships and quality time with people to hurt me and cause me to save up all sorts of untrue limiting beliefs about myself. I see how he used the feeling of isolation to drive a wedge between my husband and me, as I tally up the record of wrongs or perceived unfairness in his ability to be out among the living while I am limited to a screen with profiles or pictures. I have left behind friendships with too little fight because I carried that little backpack of baggage from childhood, and withdrew from any relationship where I felt left out or tuned out or whatever other slight may occur, without ever having the nerve to just simply tell the person what I was thinking and let them clarify their intentions. And don’t get me started on how much I hate it when someone interrupts or talks over me. Isn’t it ironic that I married the most talkative human being alive, and he as ADD so he wants to get his words out the second they come to mind? Life is funny. But as you can imagine, it is freeing to have figured out the truth. It was freeing to verbally declare to the enemy that he can’t have my family, my marriage, or me. I will address this and know that no power in hell can keep me from making it to the purposes God has for me. I will fight for my relationships from now on. I will make time for the ones that matter, no matter what obstacles the enemy tries to place in my way. Greater is He who is in me, and I am so very grateful this day for His revelation about what has been going on and why I don’t have to let it hurt me or my loved ones any longer. I have a clear view of whom I am fighting and it is not any other person in my life. Praise God, the one who has been turning my values against me is under my feet because of Christ’s glorious defeat of him. What do you value most? I wonder if anyone reading this can also see where the enemy uses that for harm. What he intends for harm,  God will use to make something good!