I’ve always loved to read and write and it began with poetry.  I pretended I knew what every writer meant in each eloquent phrase and the secrets in-between.  To me poetry was the art of giving life to the highlights and lowlights of this world. You know the big ones…love, loss, grief, happiness and pain.

2017 brought some valleys and a remembrance of past pain. I wish I could write that I recalled every detail of my past and therefore leaned harder on God more than ever because I knew of his faithfulness. But I didn’t do that. My humanness tried to make sense of it and fix it. I leaned on my understanding and ended up getting lost in the mundane activities of waking up and taking care of children. I guess I stuffed it all down and only let it surface a few times here or there. This method is of course a breeding ground in your heart for fear and anxiety. I was in a sense fighting and flighting. I wanted to flee but I also wanted to fight for my baby.

Last January I began to notice Knox grimacing in excitement or anger. His little hands would clinch and he would get angry and not be able to calm down. He began to walk on his toes, eat three things only, and fear all playground equipment. He would crash into me, trip over everything, and hate being laid down for a change of clothes/diaper. My heart had a sense of alarm but I wasn’t sure if it was worry with warrant.

He began physical therapy for low muscle tone because of a separate issue and there the therapist suggested possible sensory processing issues. Sensory what? He didn’t care about collars, tags or seams in his socks so I wasn’t sure her suggestion had much merit. I was wrong. It turns out there are more than five senses and people can be deficit in one, two, three…or even all seven of them! Knox is deficit in four senses. This I know but explaining the deficits is still something I’m learning to define.

He added occupational therapy to his schedule and thus began our journey. Knox is trying to rise above a deficit he doesn’t know he has and I am trying to rise above my selfishness. The ugliness of my heart showed clearer than ever this past year. I was frustrated, tired, hurt and worried. I didn’t want Knox to suffer after a hard day. I didn’t want to drive to therapy. I didn’t want to deal with meltdowns. I didn’t want to deal with Knox on a hard day as well as take care of his newborn sister. I wanted perfection. I demanded it and when God fell silent to my pleas I began to look around at the environment of my heart.

I was a dictator to my heavenly Father and this cruel world. I wanted everything to be okay, like yesterday, and the assurance that Knox would grow out of it and that Blaire would be free from it as well. But the truth is I am not safe from this world, none of us are. It is a mean world and it does not ask before it gives. God meant it when he told us that in this life we would see trouble… but the verse does not end with trouble. And my baby boy is not defined by four deficits. And I not defined by the valleys because the verse ends with, “Take heart because I have overcome the world.” John 16:33

Taking heart is an everyday push and an everyday work in progress. I have to remember to take heart in the One who overcomes so that in Him I may have peace.

I hope one day I can write a poem as eloquently as some my favorite writers about overcoming and that people will see my secrets in-between. Its the least I could do to help another remember to look up and take heart.

“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. Inthisworldyou willhavetrouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” John 16:33