Most days, I feel utterly unprepared for this thing called parenting a child with special needs.
Most days I am sure that I am doing it wrong.
Most days I wonder just why God trusts me so much to have given me this amazing boy so wrapped in challenges.
Most days I am on my knees praying that I am getting some small piece of it right.
I want to be the mother he needs. I want to see him succeed. I want to prove the professionals, the skeptics wrong.
I want the same things for this son as I do for all the others– the same things you want for yours.
I want him to learn.
To grow.
To find joy.
To know Jesus.
These are simple asks in a world so big, tiny hopes in a time when children are butchered for their faith, where sons and daughters slip from their daddies hands and into inky nighttime waters while fleeing slaughter and wash up on holiday beaches, where mothers consent to having their babies ripped from their wombs.
They are small things. But to me, to Phineas, they are everything we are called to in our 24 hour days. To be gentle with the dog. To copy his name. To recall colors. To hold the scissors. To recite the verse. To understand when he has hurt his sister.
I am not saving the world. I’m not stopping injustice. I’m not standing up to evil. I’m doing the one, small task entrusted to me in the moment, and I’m doing it faithfully. With as much bravery, as much grace, as I can muster from this fallible human spirit.
I am simply the mother of a child with special needs.