This post is a talk I gave last week to the women?s group at my church.?
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One day, not too long ago, I was a really good mom. I was up and out the door every day. My family operated on a schedule. I read parenting books and put their advice into practice. I had a discipline philosophy.
I read scripture with my children. We sang worship songs. We memorized verses and psalms. We prayed together every night.?I was organized and my home was in very good order. There was a system for everything.
My older daughter was in school five days a week. My little one took two naps a day, so I had plenty of time on my hands. I exercised, had quiet times, gardened, and went out to lunch.
My life wasn?t perfect, but I loved being a mom, I was happily married, and things were really good.
And as a family, we were on our merry little way and we had lots of plans, dreams, and expectations for the future.
And then about a year ago, I took Bette to an ENT, because we had noticed her not responding to sound. And while we were a little concerned, we mostly just chalked it up to her being a quirky baby.
At the ENT, she took three new patient hearing tests, and she failed all three of them. More tests were scheduled and we learned that she was completely and profoundly deaf. She was a year old and she had spent the entire first year of her life in a world of absolute silence.
When we received her diagnosis, we were devastated.?But we were given the news that Bette would be an excellent candidate for cochlear implants. It was great?news, but it left us with a big decision to make. Do we leave her as she is and learn to sign as a family or do we put her through the surgeries to get implants, which would allow her to hear?
And after a lot or prayer and research, we decided that we wanted Bette to be able to hear. Her first surgery was in July and her implant was turned on three weeks later.?Because Bette had never heard sound before, her first implant was turned on initially at a very soft level. And over time, the sound was slowly turned up, so that it wasn?t until about mid ? October that she was able to fully hear.
And you would think things would become at least somewhat easier and better, with Bette finally able to hear. And I am not kidding, at the same time Bette was finally able to fully hear, she became the neediest, fussiest, most demanding child ever. She was unhappy, she cried all the time and all she wanted was to be held. And it went on for months.
I, of course, had another child that needed love and attention, whom I had also decided to home school this year, which is not easy to do when your other child cries all the time.
It did not help that the noise level in our house was out of control. Because Bette was finally able to hear, everything had to be loud, just to make sure she could hear it. We talked loud, the TV and radio were loud, and Bette was loud. When her ?ears? (cochlear implants) are on, she can hear everything. And she loves being able hear the sound of her own voice. But when her ?ears? are off, she can?t hear anything. She returns to being deaf. But she still wants to hear herself, so she is even louder.
Bette had her second surgery in December and her second implant was activated three days before Christmas ? which on one hand was the best Christmas gift ever ? that my child could now hear out of both of her ears. On the other hand, it just ramped up the noise and the chaos even more.
By New Year?s, things hit a low point. Bette was so unhappy, and no one, least of all me, could figure out why. I spent most of my time managing her and then trying to make sure that Lilla was okay. Home schooling was nonexistent. And most of the things I used to do were impossible. I couldn?t garden, I couldn?t exercise, and I absolutely never went to lunch with friends.
I was not doing one single thing well and I was at the end of my rope. Mostly,?I just hoped that we would survive and in the process, I did not screw up my children.
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I think when tragedy strikes ? you get the diagnosis, you suddenly lose someone you love, you get the bad news ? there is an immediate period when work must be done. You create the treatment plan, you start the job hunt, or you plan the funeral. But when that part ends, you are then left on the long hard road of recovery.
Right now, we were on the long hard road of recovering Bette?s hearing, which will take years. And this is by far the hardest thing I have ever done.
Because every single day I wake up, and I have no idea what is going to happen. Every single day is another day on the learning curve of how to parent a deaf child. Very little of what I learned parenting my first child relates to how I need to parent Bette.
So it will probably come as no surprise when I say that we also don?t sing hymns anymore. We don?t learn memory verses or psalms. Our children?s bible has actually been missing for six months and I have no idea where it is.?We don?t wake up and do our school work. I simply cram it in throughout the day whenever I can.
All my systems have fallen apart.? My house is constantly out of order and extremely loud. Most days, I cannot find my shoes.
Every day, I count down the minutes until nap time. And bedtime is my absolute favorite time of day, because it means the day and the chaos is over.
At this point, I don?t have the time or energy to do so many of the things Christian parenting books say you should do to be a good parent. I don?t have it together to do a lot of ?spiritual? things for my family.
But there is one thing I always try to do for my family, and that is to pray for them.
Because the greatest blessing I can give to my children is to pray for them. And not just pray about where they are now, or the issues they are currently dealing with, but who they are growing up to be and who they will be in the future.
And I have gotten into the habit that as I pray for my children, I also pray for my grandchildren and my great grandchildren. Because I can?t think of anything more eternal, more lasting, or more significant that I could give to my family than prayers that last through the generations.
Right now, my best and most effective weapon as a parent is prayer, because I can do it anywhere at anytime. I can do it on my knees, I can do it washing dishes, and I can do it while Bette is crying out a tantrum in her crib. There is no limit to how much I can pray. And it is my best weapon as a parent because I know Jesus is in heaven praying along with me and interceding on my behalf and on behalf of my children.
God is writing a story with each of our lives and wherever you are in your story, I encourage you to pray for your children. Because even if you can?t do anything else, and even if what is happening in your life dismays you, you can still pray for your family and children and that, more than anything else we can do as mothers, makes all the difference in the world.
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Source: http://www.wisefamilyliving.com/2012/03/29/motherhood-at-its-not-so-finest/
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