JOY

Happy 2013! I love a new year. I love that a new year gives me the chance to start fresh in a sense. I love that it gives me the opportunity to reflect over the year past and think about the things that went well and not so well and think about how we can try to do things a little bit differently.

I’ve been reflecting on the past year a lot recently and if I’m honest with myself, the one word that I think would describe 2012 the best would be “overwhelming.” I love being a stay at home mom. Love it. Would not trade it for the entire world. And I am so deeply thankful that the Lord has provided for us in a way that makes it possible for me to be home. But it is hard, hard, so hard sometimes. Some days it can be so emotionally, mentally, and physically exhausting, but I am grateful for the opportunity. It’s hard for me to admit that, because I don’t want to sound like a complainer. I love my kids, but raising children is hard work, let’s be honest.

Somewhere along the line last year, Thomas went from being baby brother to twin brother (developmentally speaking) to big brother, and watching that happen pretty much broke my heart into a million pieces. Watching him do things that Emma Kate has never-and may never on this side of heaven- do, was both exciting and heart-wrenching all at the same time. Every time he would do or say something new and cute I would rejoice with him and weep for Emma Kate. It’s an interesting job raising a healthy, typical child and a child with multiple disabilities at the same time. Most days I feel like I live in these two separate, crazy worlds that somehow collide into each other and I’m constantly thinking, “How am I going to do this?” Raising Thomas is exactly how I pictured it. Raising Emma Kate, on the other hand, is a little different than the way I always dreamed it would be. Somehow special education, IEP meetings, feeding tubes, occupational therapy, speech therapy, physical therapy, behavioral therapy, and endless appointments with a long list of specialists just never made my list when I imagined mothering. It is really hard to watch things come so naturally and easily for one of your children and not for the other. There are things that Emma Kate and I have been working on in therapy for five years-simple things like pointing, and chewing and swallowing-that Thomas will pick up over night. I can ask him a question and he can answer. I can say a word and he can repeat it. It completely blows my mind that he can do that. At times, carrying the weight of raising a child with severe disabilities is so heavy that I literally feel like I am crumbling under the weight of it. It is exhausting to constantly be a voice for a child who does not have one. There are many days when I feel so beat up, and I tell Trey all the time, “I’m just so tired”. And as a side note, I just have to say that I am so deeply thankful for a husband who loves me and listens to me and deals with all of my garbage and emotional breakdowns. He's pretty much amazing, but you probably know that already.

Please don’t hear me wrong. I love that Emma Kate is exactly the way she is. This was no accident. I love how Exodus 4:11 says this, “The LORD said to him, "Who gave man his mouth? Who makes him deaf or mute? Who gives him sight or makes him blind? Is it not I, the LORD?” The LORD over all creation made her this way. I am so grateful that she is mine that I can’t even put it into words. She brings me great joy and sometimes when I look into her eyes, even though we can’t communicate with words, I feel like I can almost see straight to her soul. She is everything beautiful to me. I am madly in love with her. Madly in love with both of my children. And I love them very differently and I love them both the same. But I would be lying if I said that along with that great joy did not come days filled with great sadness. And so the grief comes and it comes hard and it comes heavy.

BUT— Then I run to Jesus, because I know he can handle it. And he can handle all my anxiety and worry and fear and doubt and anger and bitterness. And I ask Him to pour out His grace over me. And He does. He is my only hope. I have to rest in His sovereignty and goodness and promises, because I know that NOTHING else on this earth can satisfy. I have to believe that He wrote my story and that he is working all of this-even my hardest life circumstances-together for my good and for the good of my family.

There was a disability conference in Minneapolis that I really, really wanted to go to in November, but it just wasn’t practical for us at the time. There were all sorts of good speakers there like John Piper and Greg Lucas, and I knew it would be awesome. It turns out that they recorded everything and conveniently posted the recordings on desiringgod.org, so I didn’t miss as much as I thought I had. I’ve spent the last several days listening to all of the talks. It was funny, because I had already decided that I wanted to focus on JOY in 2013. That was kind of my new year’s resolution. Not working out. Not eating better. Not blogging more—not that any of those are bad things...I just wanted joy despite the sadness and the disappointments of this broken, messed up world.

Great for me, John Piper did a sermon on that very topic. He talked about all of the things that I had been thinking and praying so hard about.  He focused on Paul’s words, “sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.” I loved how he said this,

 “God is so sovereign over the disasters and disappointments of our lives that he is able to make everyone of them serve our everlasting joy in him. This sovereign grace is the ground of our joy in the sorrows of deep disappointment. Not merely the ground of our joy after the sorrows of disappointment (as true as that is), but in the sorrows of disappointment. The Christian Hedonist does not merely pursue joy after sorrow. He pursues it in sorrow, in disappointment. His watchword in this life is 2 Corinthians 6:10, “Sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.”

As paradoxical as it sounds, it IS possible to have joy and sadness all at the same time, and for that, I am so thankful. I take great comfort in knowing that I don’t have to pretend. I don’t have to put on my happy face. I can be really, really sad and I can also be really, really glad. Jesus makes that possible, and because of Him, those two feelings that don’t normally go together, do.

The older I get, the more I see so much sadness and disappointment in this world and the more I long for heaven. That is my true home and I am so thankful that there will be no more sadness there. No more tears. No more disappointment. No. More. Disability.

So, this year I will pray for joy. Joy despite sadness. Joy in disability. Joy in dirty diapers. Joy in picking up the one million toys scattered throughout my house. Joy in the mundane, everyday details of my life. Knowing that my job as a mom DOES matter. It IS important. That cooking and laundry and dishes DO matter. That I am raising up little ones for His kingdom and my relationships are the only things that I am taking with me to heaven. Praying for an eternal perspective to come with everything I do. Praying that when the future seems too long, that God will give me the grace to make it through today. “One day at a time,” like my sweet Momma says all the time. And praying that God would work through my weakness.

My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.
2 Corinthians 12:9