The sweet and sour pain of parenting...

Once again I find myself on a Tuesday evening sitting at dance class, working out the problems of the world in my head whilst watching beautiful girls dance in ways that make my legs ache. Beth Nielsen Chapman's heartbreakingly beautiful "Sand and Water" playing in my ears but only adding to the darkness of my mood. "What To Expect While Your Expecting" fails to tell you of the terrible ache your heart feels when you can't kiss the hurt and make it better...when the obstacles seem too much for one little body to take. This pain that I wouldn't trade for a second, for in doing so would be emptying my life of the sweet soul it accompanies, a thought too devastating to contemplate. I long so for another crazy day, another Pizza Inn-cousin in a bite suit-weird encounter in a parking lot kind of day. The one where I can barely type from laughing so hard. But the mood hangs heavy over my head and over our family these days. There are so many people experiencing so much more devastating problems than ours, I feel tremendous guilt even expressing complaints or frustrations. We are truly blessed in countless ways. But, my friends, there are days when it is hard to sing of those blessings when one of my greatest blessings suffers as she does. Living a life of comparisons and unrealistic expectations to be someone other than herself. To live with a beautifully designed and wonderfully unique brain that makes her learn differently, makes her challenging to figure out and a puzzle to "fix". A girl who has to live under the specter, though wonderful she is, of her sister. Who can't be allowed to be the perfectly wonderful kid she is because she learns differently...doesn't have blonde hair and zero body fat...is an artist and athlete first and a reader second. This precious creature who God must smile about every day...who buries her head in my chest, tears magnifying her eyes when she can't take one more comparison, one more correction of her abilities. Why isn't being herself enough and why won't anyone give her the help she so desperately need and we want to her to have? My chest burns with fear for her fragile ego, with fury for her need for help with an obvious learning difference, for sadness towards those who have no idea what a bright, caring, ball of light this child is. This is the sweet pain of parenting...one that I'll gladly endure.



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