The heaping mound of responsibilities and disappointments accumulated by my late 30's had tried, sneakily and quietly, to drown out my childlike instinct to live with wonder and celebration. Over the past few years I have rediscovered the celebration of the uneventful today, as if reunited with someone I forgot I once knew. Maybe it's truer to say that pain and loss, in its universal way, has forced me to find joy in the simpler things of life.
One of the purely bright sides of walking in the shoes as a Special Needs parent has been experiencing the unfiltered happiness of our baby girl's successes. And let me tell you, every letter of the word 'success' has been wildly redefined. The stubbornness of my 'normal' kids would have been processed as an exhaustive burden, whereas Whitty's stubbornness is proudly pinned on her like a golden stared asset of determination and survival skills. The colossal amount of time it takes for her to put on her leggings is met with claps, and kisses, and compliments; in contrast, my other children's stalling would have received an irritated reminder to 'hurry it along.' The barn doors of defining success have all but blown far and away in the storm.
I recently read how suffering and grief expands and stretches the soul to burgeoning expanses. Likewise, we can consequently experience the comfort and joy of the Lord to the same capacity that the loneliness and sorrows have distended our souls. Beatitudes, anyone?
The blessing in the Christian life is allowing, not resisting, the marriage between both loss and joy, pain and comfort. In A Grace Disguised, Jerry Sittser suggests that maturity is not found in striving to get over the loss, to graduate from the pain, since that would be both futile and without honor to what once was. In the case of losing a loved one, having a body marred by Cancer, carrying the burdens for a child with disabilities, etc., peace is floating in the hope and sustenance of the Grace of Christ, while reality swims, ever all around you. It's the supernatural, unexplainable gift of God to experience both peace and heavenly joy in our most raw vulnerabilities and weakest places. I'm not foolish enough to say that I won't buck heartbreak, or be tempted to numb it, we all do that. But in between the waves of trial, and personal failures, I am trying to focus on all of the sweet, albeit small victories and joys in my life.
I visited Whitty's classroom on Monday. When I met her adorable classmates in her Special Ed class, I was delighted by their utter sweetness, but to be honest, I was still shocked. 'So this is where we are.' That's ugly and entitled, I know, but it's true.
Whitney's journey has been nothing short of mysterious and atypical. She looks 'normal', but she's not. In her 6 years, we have never had answers, just results. My husband and I have just begun settling into the breadth of this reality this past Spring. In a relatively short period of time, our dreams of 'normal' were forced, this time entirely, to give way to 'beautiful'. There are times when the fear and pain has literally taken my breath away. But then, those times, those gifts of deeper friendships, comfort, complete victorious rejoicing...they could never have been recognized apart from the gift of pain.
When Whitty yells across the street to our wonderful neighbor Mr. Dennis, excited and shouting, 'Pop Pop Dennis! Pop Pop Dennis! Hi! Hi!' we all experience love. The times when she blatantly takes her brother's food, then judiciously tells on him when he rightfully takes it back, we laugh at her audaciousness. The way she sings in the car, or gives kisses and hugs, or clearly articulates her wants when ice cream is involved, it's like winning in life every time!
It is not what Whitney can do and can't do that brings the Lord glory, and our hearts delight- it is who she is. And although it's still hard, frustrating, and littered with my own failures on a daily basis, I can see the gift of God displayed in her life, and can better enter into the sufferings of those around me. I'm definitely not as gracious, patient, or humble as I need to be, but I can tell on the inside that things have been rearranged. I can love more, and love better, then I used to be able to. My soul has been stretched by this grief, yet the Lord mysteriously keeps filling it back up again with hope. Because I can love and hope, if not just slightly more, I know I can be content, even amongst fear and pain. I no longer strive to graduate myself out of this burden, but I strive to celebrate in the midst of it, to 'suffer well' as Katherine and Jay Arnold would say. And this, this is the place where His Peace nourishes and exposes the beautiful things of Heaven and life-a glory that promises to overshadow, then one day conquer, all of our wastelands and thorns. And I take comfort in the revelation that pain and suffering cannot outweigh, permanently, the resurrecting ways of God, and His celebratory love.