“Why you make that face, Mama?” Findlay asked.
I blinked back tears and pointed to a word on the page. “Sound out this word.”
Findlay wasn’t fooled; he wouldn’t look at the word but instead continued to search my face.
The tears refused to be dammed back by clenched eyelids. I ugly cried. Blubbered, I think is the word.
“Why you cry, Mama?”
I couldn’t tell him why I was crying. I couldn’t tell him I was beyond frustrated and had fallen, head-long, into the chasm of total discouragement. I couldn’t tell him that, despite nearly a year of morning reading lessons, he was proving less that he could read and more that he had a learning disability. That morning I did an online assessment and learned that he had 13 of 14 signs of dyslexia.
If he did have dyslexia, it would be his third diagnosis, after “ADHD – severe” and “speech/language disorder” (significant speech delay). And that on top of my other son’s autism and non-verbality.
I was determined to homeschool my kids. But what if I couldn’t do it? What if my boys would each function better in a classroom with teachers who were highly educated and better equipped to deal with their bounty of special needs? Fortunately, I quickly identified that thought as the absurd idea that it was: God gave my boys to ME to love, guide, and teach. He did not give them to me just so I could hand them off to strangers 40+ hours a week to then go out and pursue some selfish goal of attaining money or career status.
So I blubbered a bit and then got myself together. We closed the reading book for the day. Everything would be okay.
EVERYTHING SUCKS. Life is stupid hard.
The next day I was walloped again.
During our reading lesson, I was determined to be gentler and more patient, but Findlay wasn’t having it. One of us had to be frustrated and since it wasn’t me, he seemed determined that it would be him. He began the lesson whimpering and quickly descended into crying, arm-crossing, and turning his back on the book. I kept my cool and urged him to again try sounding out the word.
“I have to go potty,” he announced.
I excused him and he returned a few moments later. We resumed the lesson and he did as he’d been doing: forgetting to include the first sound in each word so that “not” became “ot”, or turning words around so that “cap” became “pac”. I ended the lesson before we both got too irritated. Findlay went to play with his monster trucks and I guided my other son, Coco, to the bathroom for his hourly potty break.
The floor was a giant puddle of pee. For a moment I was baffled. Then I realized that when Findlay had gone potty earlier, he’d resorted to his modus operandi from ages past: he angrily peed on every surface his surprisingly extensive stream could reach, in retaliation for me making him do something he didn’t want to do.
I put Coco on the toilet and got to work sopping up the gallon of urine that covered every bathroom surface except the countertop. Wait – could it be on the countertop too? I checked. Whew.
Normally, whenever Findlay made a mess that required sanitizing, I made him stand near me until the job was finished, since he needed to see the consequences of his actions but wasn’t quite able to do a good enough job of cleaning yet himself. But this time I did not want him to see that he’d won. There I was crying again, which meant that his retaliation had its desired effect. Mama was defeated. So I cleaned up the urine pool in silence minus a bit of quiet sniffling.
Later that day we went grocery shopping. Coco is a wanderer and either gets lost or causes mass cart pileups if he’s not tethered, so the rule is that he must hold on to our cart at all times. Like most autistic kids, he stims a lot so he spends much of our shopping trips holding onto the cart with one hand and flapping his other hand while wildly shaking his head back and forth. Findlay is very good at keeping a hand on the cart at all times, but he’s not even a little bit good at keeping his voice at a respectable level. Or filtering what he says. On this particular day he shouted – good naturedly, not angrily – about wanting to “cut heads off!!” and “kill all the bad guys!!” This kept on, despite the many times I told him to keep his voice down and talk about something less violent. Not surprisingly, our motley crew got even more disgusted glances than usual.
By the end of these two learning-disability confirming, pee-on-the-floor, public shaming filled days, I was deflated. Disheartened. Utterly defeated.
I am failing my kids; I am the reason they can’t act right. I’m failing society by bringing up two kids who are not typically intelligent, or calm, or normal in any way, shape, or form.
We got home and as I put groceries away and began making dinner, fighting words filled my head: death, darkness, ashes, enemies, graves, slaves. I needed music that matched my emotions.
No, I didn’t turn on death metal.
But I did need to hear and sing songs about war. About being VICTORIOUS.
I needed to hear words about God fighting WITH me and FOR me.
So picked up a sword. Okay, it was a paring knife. And I got to work dicing peppers and onions for spaghetti sauce while singing lyrics like:
there is Another in the fire
my debt left for dead beneath the waters
no longer a slave to my sin
there is a grave that holds no body
the darkness bows to Him
the prison walls cave in
I’ll count the joy come every battle, ‘cause I know that’s where You’ll be
The lyrics were full of the captivity, pain, and suffering that my heart felt burdened by. But all of that darkness was lifted with each repeat of the song. Because the lyrics acknowledge that “in this world [we] will have trouble” indeed. But they also proclaim that we are never alone in our hardships; God is ever working even our sufferings for OUR good and for HIS glory. “Be of good cheer,” Jesus urged, “I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).
The song reminded me of what Peter said in his epistle: “it is better to suffer for doing good…than for doing evil. (I Peter 3:17). That is, we all suffer. Christian, atheist, old, young, mom, grandma, single woman – we all suffer. But it’s better to suffer for doing good things than to suffer for doing evil things.
I know it was God’s will for me to be a mom to two special kids. So yup, I’m suffering. But I’m suffering doing (or trying to do) good. And He is with me. If I didn’t have atypical kids, I would not have to lean so hard into Jesus’s strength so often. I know I would not be as patient, compassionate, empathetic, or emotionally strong as I am today if I had so-called typical kids. True, some days are hard. But overall the years with my children have strengthened me, not weakened me.
Besides, no matter how hard this short life may get, I will live in paradise with God for eternity. That makes everything okay.
By the time I called my crew to dinner, my circumstances had not changed. My family was still the loud, hot mess it was back when I was ugly crying and sopping up pee and getting unkind glances at the store. But now my soul was turned away from focusing on the troubles of this fleeting life, back to where it belonged – directed toward the eternal. Toward hope, and joy, and full-out victory. Toward the source of it all – my loving warrior King.
I smiled, we prayed, and ate in peace.
JUST KIDDING! Dinner was the messy affair it always is, where I begged each child to eat, then threatened to take away dessert if they didn’t finish, then reprimanded them for leaving the table without asking to be excused. But God in His gentleness reminded me that I’m just as disobedient and disrespectful to Him as my kids are to me, and since He treats me with mercy and grace, I should extend the same to my boys (including my husband).
Life is hard, people, I don’t have to tell you that. But resolve to suffer for doing good, rather than for doing evil. God will fight for you if you do.
Verses to consider:
Ephesians 6:12 – Description of the war we fight in this world
Ephesians 6: 10-18 – Our role in the war
God’s roles in the war:
Psalm 18:2
Psalm 28:7
Psalm 84:11
Psalm 94:22
Psalm 118: 5-21
Proverbs 30:5
+ hundreds more
Song quoted: “Another in the Fire” by Hillsong UNITED
Perspective. Eternity in paradise.