Walking through the Valley of a Trauma...a moment of healing and clarity

I can't tell you the number of times I have silently prayed God would heal my son's mind over the years. Make his brain act as though it "should". Take away the impulsivity. Take away those tendencies that make life harder than the average hard.
Before I continue, let me preface this with the truth. We love our son and all that he is. We think he is remarkable in more ways that we can count. However, over the years we have struggled with the reality of a son that has ADHD. Not in the way you typically picture a child with ADHD bouncing off the walls. But a child that is inattentive, wickedly smart, has had difficulty controlling the impulse to excessively eat, control the volume of his voice, stutter, obsessively pick the skin off of his fingers to meet a sensory impulse to pick, always trying to be the center of attention, and not being able to read a social cue or read a facial expression if it hit him in the face. On top of ADHD he has several autistic tendencies. We have spoken with numerous professionals and they all say the same thing, "Yes, he has lots of autistic tendencies, but getting an official medical diagnosis for him would be difficult because he never had a language delay, and he is empathetic toward others. But yes, he has a lot of those tendencies we see in children with autism." Brilliant problem solver. Brain is constantly racing with a million ideas. Married to the need for structure. Difficulty handling emotions. Sensory sensitive. Can't calm down if he gets angry or upset. Low muscle tone, stamina, and coordination(extra hard for boys since sports are what so many children are into at his age). It's been a challenging road. He is noticeably not like his peers, so as parents we witness the weird faces kids make when they look at him. Nothing slays me more than this. He needs extra help in many ways, but because he doesn't have an official diagnosis, he doesn't qualify for services. So Mark and I have poured a lot of our resources into helping him in ways he needs help. We have jokingly said that one day we will have to tell Zachary that we don't have a college fund set up for him, but we got him through 3rd grade. So yes, life can feel overwhelming and hard when you wonder how you are going to pay for the next speech therapy session, or counseling session. All the while your heart breaks because you want children to see your child for all the amazingness that he is: kind, generous, compassionate, filled with integrity. Pretty much, Zachary is going to make one woman the luckiest woman on earth because he is going to be the greatest husband in the world. The most faithful friend. And one heck of an employee, or employer for that matter. And although we can see who he is, and all of his strengths...my heart has broken a million and one times too because of how he has struggled.

But...back to my intent for this blog post. Zachary has had 2 appointments with a counselor since he fell through the ice and into a frigid pond. During his last appointment his counselor asked him what it felt like when he fell into the water. He said it was very cold. Then she asked him what happened next. He said he couldn't see one of his friends, but he could hear him sobbing. Then he said he tried to get out the way he came, but couldn't get onto the ice, or break the ice the way he came. She asked him how that made him feel when he realized he couldn't get back out that way. Thinking that he would talk about his fear at that moment, he instead said, "Once I couldn't get out the way I came, I realized I needed to turn around and start punching my way through the ice in the other direction, to swim out."
The counselor then looked at me and Mark and said, "Those autistic tendencies that you started seeing me for months ago were probably his saving grace that day. He was able to separate the emotional from the rational and solve the problem at hand. Most children would have just panicked."
Oh my gosh, the number of tears I have cried since this beautiful moment of clarity...Jesus knew...Jesus knew exactly how he made Zachary and who He made him to be...
What I had always blindly seen as his greatest weakness in his life, was actually, and is actually, his GREATEST strength.
I am so heartsick that Zachary has endured what he did that day on the pond. I am sad for this trauma. And I am overwhelmed with sadness for his fear. But during our healing, I am so thankful that God has allowed the blinders to come off of my eyes so I can clearly see how remarkable this young man is that he has blessed me with and allowed me the privilege to raise. I always knew he was remarkable, but now I see him in an entirely new and marvelous light as well. And that is a treasure, a gift, I never want to take for granted.
The FOREVER Grateful,
Joyful and Tired Mom

*Please do not hate me for being honest about parenting hardships. I want to make it abundantly clear that I have always loved my child, all of my children, with every beat of my heart for who they are. But there is pain in parenting because you walk around a (sometimes) cruel world with your heart on your sleeve each and every second, of each and every moment, of each and every day. And when you feel joy deeply as I do, you also feel pain deeply too. I hope I made that clear in this post.