Monday, April 13, 2015

The Straw that Broke Me...

In the past month or two we've been told that all four children might have mitochondrial disease.  That Pip might have cerebral palsy.  Abel may well be on the autism spectrum.

Big things.  Hard things.  And through it all, there have been some tears, but no break downs.  We've been told we look good.  I honestly haven't known why, apart from the grace of God.

Then the straw came.  The one that broke me.  Yesterday I remembered to check the mail, since I'd forgotten the day before.  In it was the letter from the charter school Mercy attends.  The one that was supposed to say that Gilead was accepted for kindergarten for the 2015-2016 school year.  Only it didn't.  Instead it said he was on the waiting list.




I knew it was a lottery.  However, siblings get drawn before anyone else, and though there are no guarantees, it's pretty much an implied guarantee.  I lost it.  You see, giving up homeschooling was hard for me.  So hard.  It wasn't easy for me to trust God with letting go of Mercy during school hours.  And now, Gilead doesn't have a place in the school that has been such a blessing to us in a really difficult season.  

I took a long nap.  Then I cried.  And once the dam broke, I couldn't plug it back up again.  The river flowed until I fell asleep.  I woke up to tend to a sick Pip at 12:30am, then cried myself to sleep again.

God's grace isn't any less there than it was when I was "standing strong."  But it's different on days like today.  Today I feel the uncertainty of the future.  The pain.  The heartache.  Not knowing where Gilead will go to school.  When Pip will walk.  If Abel is "on the spectrum."  What any of our futures hold.

And I'm so thankful that God doesn't turn away from the tears, but wipes them for me. That we now attend a church in which the pastor wants the congregation to be okay with Abel's meltdowns.  That we are surrounded by gracious people.

Because today, I'm broken, and I can't guarantee when I'll be back together again.

*As an addendum, I was able to get in touch with the school the following day.  After spending the day working on it, they discovered that we were the victims of the one lottery mistake of the year.  One child with the same last name, and a first name just one letter off from Mercy's also entered the lottery, and her letter and Gilead's were inadvertently switched.  He was, indeed, drawn for enrollment this upcoming year.



  

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